Those who were selected – or allowed — to attend the Trump administration’s ‘economic workshop’ in Bahrain return to reality on Thursday, taking with them experiences and observations that still require some serious parsing in order to understand what happened for 48-hours on the tiny island nation between Saudi Arabia and Qatar in the Persian Gulf. First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner at long last revealed half of the peace plan at the helm of which his father-in-law-the-president placed him: the economic half leaving plenty of space for critics and cynics to predict the plan’s imminent failure in large part due to the common belief that nothing will move until the political deal-breakers are at last put to bed. Although those present noted the absence of both Israeli and Palestinian officials, it was the latter who were more vocal in expressing criticism of the Americans as interlocutors and angry allegations that the Israelis are receiving favored treatment from Washington. One frequently heard criticism of the workshop was that without the political side everything is expected to be done in a vacuum with the inside track on investments go to an elite “inner circle.”