The Obama administration announced today that the Israelis and Palestinians will begin preliminary peace talks in Washington. The news comes after Israel agreed on Sunday to release 104 Palestinian prisoners. Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland, and non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of The World Through Arab Eyes: Arab Public Opinion and the Reshaping of the Middle East, , discusses the prospects for peace in the Middle East. (Photo: AP Images).