(Special) Friends of Palestine. Sometimes when viewing the BBC's coverage of Israel and area you can't help wondering what contacts they have and what friends their correspondents make out there.

Perhaps it's not entirely their fault- few Israelis want to talk to them (generally out of moral repugnance at an organisation they see as terrorist apologists)- but there are an awful lot of occasions where they go and trawl through opinion among Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank.

Alan Johnston's been out and about again in Gaza recently, touting around for sound-bytes on the 'so-called road map' (his phrase). You can imagine his line of questioning (in arabic)- 'excuse me, sir/madam, would you like to tell me what you think of the so-called roadmap?', to which the response might be 'mmmemph! That so-called road map!'. It it any wonder that 'A journey up the Gaza Strip illustrates the local people's disillusionment.'?

In fact the regularly blasphemed road-map could constructively have been left out of this foray and this report. They could be asking a question like, 'do you support Ariel Sharon's recent plan for an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip?' or 'what do you think of the Likud membership who blocked Sharon's withdrawal plan?'. That would be interesting if insightfully reported. Ah well.

I wonder if he also tried to engage debate on the trial of the IDF soldier who shot Tom Hurndall last spring? A BBC correspondent would have been able to sympathise with Palestinian grievances, as this reporting of Hurndall's mother's response demonstrates:

'She said she still found it difficult to believe that justice would be done.

"It is not sufficient to come this far merely for the staging of a show trial," she said.

The BBC's Middle East correspondent James Reynolds says there is an inescapable feeling among many that this trial is going ahead because the victim was British, not Palestinian.'

There are three calumnies that the BBC succeeds in spreading here. One, ignoring the fact that Hurndall's mother naturally wants the killer to face the consequences of his actions, implying that the Israelis are not supplying that. Two, that now the case has been brought it will be a public relations exercise. Three, that the whole process is tainted with racism.

But what about the other side? The fact that the Israelis initially contested the case shows that they did not intend to make a special allowance for Mr Hurndall's citizenship (incidentally I notice that one of the charges against 'their' man is obstruction of justice). It also shows that they did not intend on there being any 'show-trial'. Conveying no appreciation that this is an example of Israeli willingness to submit their activities in Gaza to the law courts might explain why the only people who want to talk to the BBC are Palestinians.