I think it have to do with the possible correlation between entities to add and entities to delete. If you add an entity to delete and it also has added in entities to insert, the UOW has to make a decision on whether save it, delete it, etc. In this case, the logic is clear: is you add a new entity to the toDelete collection it means that you want to remove it to the insert collection (in case you added it earlier to the toInsert collection). So I think it is more a convention thing to make the process clear and unambiguous.
The workaround should work though.