Since he visited the Jenin refugee camp last week and expressed his horror at what he saw, Terje Roed-Larsen, the chief United Nations representative here and the man who began the secret contacts that led to the Oslo agreements, has come under an unusually harsh personal attack by the Israeli government. He has been accused of ''record-high audacity'' and ''anti-Semitic ideas,'' and officials in the prime minister's office have talked of having him expelled.
The attacks may be the most furious the 54-year-old Norwegian has faced, but they are hardly the first. As an active supporter of the land-for-peace process that he helped begin in Oslo a decade ago, he has been assailed by both Israeli and Arab foes of the agreements. His denunciations of suicide bombings have also prompted some accusations of bias from the Palestinians.
''I feel supremely confident because I know I did the right thing and I know I'm doing the right thing,'' Mr. Roed-Larsen said in a telephone interview. ''Any decent human being in that place on that day, seeing corpses dug out just below the surface, smelling the stench of decay, would have been shocked and horrified. That is not an accusation. That is a reaction to human tragedy.''
Today, at a news conference announcing the composition of a United Nations team to look into the events in Jenin, Secretary General Kofi Annan said he was disappointed that Mr. Roed-Larsen was being publicly attacked by Israeli officials ''for just talking about what he saw.''
''He never accused Israel of massacre,'' Mr. Annan said. ''He never even used the word massacre.''
The intensity of the criticism from the Israeli government has come as something of a surprise. The devastation of the refugee camp has been the focus of many news accounts, and other foreign officials who have visited the Jenin camp -- including the United States assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, William J. Burns -- have deplored the destruction. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had called on Israel to allow relief workers into the camp.
But it is on Mr. Roed-Larsen, whose formal title is United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, that the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appears to have focused its greatest anger, especially since the decision to send a United Nations fact-finding team to Jenin.
While visiting the Jenin camp last Thursday, Mr. Roed-Larsen made various comments to reporters. He described the destruction by the Israeli Army as ''morally repugnant,'' and said it was ''shocking'' that relief workers had not been allowed into the camp for 11 days. ''Combating terrorism does not give a blank check to kill civilians,'' he said. He also infuriated the Israeli government by summoning foreign ambassadors to relate what he had found.
Defense of Mr. Roed-Larsen has come from Israeli officials he has worked with over the years. ''Generally speaking he's a great friend of the state of Israel,'' said Danny Yatom, a former head of the Mossad intelligence agency who worked with him for many years.
Uri Savir, an Israeli negotiator who worked with Mr. Roed-Larsen on the Oslo accords, called the charges leveled against the United Nations envoy a ''disgrace.'' Ron Pundak, an academic who was involved in the secret meetings in Oslo and who is now director of the Peres Center for Peace, described the attacks on Mr. Roed-Larsen as ''outrageous.''
''Knowing him for almost a decade, I can say he's definitely not anti-Israeli,'' Mr. Pundak said. ''I consider him as a very, very honest broker. On every occasion, when a bomb exploded here, he was one of the first to stand up against Yasir Arafat and criticize him.''
By most accounts, Mr. Sharon's antipathy for Mr. Roed-Larsen predates the current furor, and is grounded in the prime minister's abhorrence of the Oslo accords. Since his election, Mr. Sharon has refused to meet him and has resented his constant efforts to act as go-between between Mr. Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and the Israeli government.
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