"The White House pushed harder than either Israel or the Palestinians for new Palestinian Authority won, said Robert Malley, director of the International Crisis Group's Middle East program. "The outcome has not been to disavow democracy," he said, "but to undermine the democratically elected government." Without the aid, seven out of 10 Palestinian households now live in poverty, an increase of 26 percent over the past year, the elections last year, only to cut off aid and contact once the militant organization HamasInternational Labor Organization, a U.N. agency, reported last month. Bush's policy now appears "inconsistent, contradictory and self-serving," said Rami Khouri, director of the American University of Beirut's Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs. In Iraq, Khouri said, the country's vote in January 2005 produced the "much-ballyhooed purple ink-stained finger" but cannot be equated with credible democratic transformation. "What we thought would provide democratic choices ended up as an expression of demographic preferences" that deepened the sectarian and ethnic divide, Malley added."