When Professor Paul Whiteley of the new Essex Centre for the Study of Integrity published his study "Are Britons getting more dishonest?" this month, he didn't have to wait very long for the answer.

Just three days later, Eirian Walsh-Atkins, the head of constitutional policy in the Cabinet Office, resigned after posting a message on Twitter saying that she hoped a group campaigning for better regulation of the lobby industry "would die". The headlines became more disturbing by the day. On 28 January the Guardian reported, "Gove awarded public funds to organisation that he advised". The Sunday Times reported on 29 January, "Internet minister in web shares row", and Monday 30 saw the Independent revealing that, "Lobbying reform official in Twitter rant never even met the campaigners she attacked".

Nick Clegg's condemnation of Israel's settlements as "an act of deliberate vandalism" was the understatement of the week, but it still managed to provoke the wrath of the Israeli establishment. The country's Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, claimed during a visit to London that Clegg's remarks were not only untrue but also unfortunate, damaging and irresponsible.

The Deputy Prime Minister may have broken the "unwritten rules of the diplomatic game", as the Daily Telegraph alluded, but he was only stating the obvious. The International Court of Justice ruled in July 2004 that, "Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, are illegal and an obstacle to peace and to economic and social development [... and] have been established in breach of international law."

The bad news from Israel keeps coming thick and fast. If the report by European embassies in Tel Aviv on Israel's discrimination against Palestinian Arabs was bad, then surely the internal EU report on the West Bank was shocking. One only needs to scan the two to realise why the Amman talks between Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and Yitzhak Molko, the advisor to the Israeli prime minister, are doomed to fail.

Faced with an international Quartet deadline of 26 January to resume negotiations, both parties have started to meet under the auspices of Jordan's King Abdullah II. Palestinian factions, including members of Fatah, were appalled by Abbas's decision to get involved, given that the Israeli government has refused yet again to meet their minimum demand of an end to illegal settlement expansion in the occupied territories. Clearly, the Palestinian Authority leadership in Ramallah has succumbed to pressure and returned to the negotiating table after 15 months of no contact.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has stressed in discussions on the sidelines of reconciliation talks in Cairo that he refuses to let the Palestinian Authority become a security apparatus protecting Israel like the militias led by Antoine Lahad and his ilk in southern Lebanon. His position is one which we hope will deepen, because the PA has actually played such a role since day one of its foundation in the hope that it will grow into an independent Palestinian state. This has still not been achieved; in fact, the situation has worsened. Witness the fact that the Palestinian President no longer has power or responsibilities on the ground following the Israeli civil administration return to work in the occupied territories.