Last week, Jared Kushner held his big Peace to Prosperity conference in Bahrain. And if we’re evaluating from a standpoint of actually helping to bring peace to the Middle East, i.e. the stated goal, things did not go well. For starters, Palestinian leadership boycotted the whole thing, saying that the notion of unveiling an economic plan prior to presenting a political one made no sense, as it did not address major points of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, such as control of the West Bank and Palestinian statehood. Kushner, who views this whole thing as just another real estate deal, reportedly gave a speech in which he “envisaged the impoverished Gaza Strip as a tourist destination, omitting mention of Israel and Egypt’s 12-year blockade of the Hamas-controlled territory, as well as Israel’s 52-year-long occupation of the West Bank, which restricts trade and labor movements.” When he did reference politics, it was to offer the sophisticated take that if “there’s not a fear of people doing terrorism”—emphasis ours—it’ll “allow for much faster flow of goods and people,” without offering, y’know, a proposal for how to stop terrorism in the region.

According to media reports, “there was an odd mix of people [at the conference], many with no link to the conflict: billionaires, real estate developers, a 15-yo who had 40k Instagram followers & a banker who was confused as to why he was even there.” While Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin excitedly likened the $50 billion investment opportunity—which, again, will almost certainly never happen without achieving peace first—to “a hot IPO,” those with actual Middle East expertise who read the plan were slightly less enthusiastic. “I would give this so-called plan a C- from an undergraduate student,” tweeted Daniel Kurtzer, former U.S. ambassador to Israel under George W. Bush. “The authors of the plan clearly understand nothing.” Michael Koplow, policy director of the Israel Policy Forum, wrote: “As low as my expectations were for this peace initiative, it’s clear that I hadn’t ratcheted them down nearly far enough. Leaving aside that this reads like an investment prospectus for a project that an intern conceived of a week ago, literally none of it is actionable…it is the Monty Python sketch of Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives.”

But Kushner, what with his years of relevant experience working as a tristate area slumlord and personally ordering the removal of stories at his newspaper that were critical of his friends, is undeterred. On Wednesday he held a conference call with Arab and Israeli reporters to announce that the White House would provide “new steps” next week regarding his big plan, and, in an apparent effort to convince Palestinian leaders to get on board, he really laid on the charm: