Obama intends to throw his support behind a 2002 Saudi peace initiative endorsed by the Arab League and backed by Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister and leader of the ruling Kadima party.

The proposal gives Israel an effective veto on the return of Arab refugees expelled in 1948 while requiring it to restore the Golan Heights to Syria and allow the Palestinians to establish a state capital in east Jerusalem.

On a visit to the Middle East last July, the president-elect said privately it would be "crazy" for Israel to refuse a deal that could "give them peace with the Muslim world", according to a senior Obama adviser.

Whether or not Obama actually intends to push this plan, there are a few errors in the above:

1. The Arab Peace Initiative doesn't give Israel veto power over return of refugees.

2. As the name implies, the Arab Peace Initiative is ARAB and not Muslim. It was adopted by the Arab League, an organization that does not include non-Arab Muslim countries such as Iran. It is even doubtful that the member states of the Arab League all agree about what would constitute fulfillment of the conditions of this vague plan, or that countries like Libya would recognize a Jewish state in any borders or under any conditions.

3. It is not at all certain that Zippy Tzipi Livni really supports the plan in the interpretation offered by Mahnaimi or Obama or the "source close to."

4. The beauty of the Arab peace initiative from the Arab point of view, is that it has no operative mechanism. When Israel said "let's talk about it," the reply of the Arabs was that there is nothing to talk about. Israel fulfills the plan, and then the Arab states can decide or not decide to keep their end of the bargain. If Obama tries to make it into a real plan of action, he will find that it is not so easy to get agreement among the Arab states.

Before we get all excited about this, remember that Uzi Mahnaimi is infamous for manufacturing canards from whole cloth. It was he who perpetrated the hoax about the Israeli "ethnobomb" that kills Arabs but not Jews, and it was he who announced a few times (based on information from "sources close to...") that Israel was about to invade Iran.

Remember too, that Mr. Obama is not in office yet, and hasn't done anything. Right now, all we can do is point out the dangers and folly of some of these ideas and hope they aren't true.

Ami Isseroff