Israeli security services are stepping up protection of public officials after death threats against cabinet ministers by militant Jews opposed to a planned pullout from the Gaza Strip, officials said yesterday. Incitement and threats against officials in favour of the withdrawal have reached such a peak of late that the daughter of slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin wrote in an open letter that the ?writing is on the wall? for another assassination.

?Wake up before it is too late?, Dalia Rabin wrote in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily. ?If we don?t do enough now to stop the deterioration we will once again witness the horrible spectacle of the murder of another prime minister.?

Rabin was killed in 1995 by an ultranationalist Jew opposed to his peace moves with the Palestinians.

In the latest threat, Transport Minister Meir Sheetrit received letters saying his wife and children would be killed if he continued to support Prime Minister Ariel Sharon?s plan to evacuate settlers and troops from the Gaza Strip this year.

?You will attend the funeral of your children. We will murder your wife and you?, said an excerpt of one letter cited in a news story in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. The daily quoted a police source as saying that 84 senior officials were under protection due to concern for their lives.

Another cabinet minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, said he too had received threatening letters which he had given to police.

Last week Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a former Prime Minister, was accosted by supporters of Jewish settlers while attending a wedding and Education Minister Limor Livnat was jostled and heckled at a memorial ceremony.

Officials said the incidents prompted the national police chief to order a tightening of security at events attended by public figures. He also advised them to avoid circulating in public unless absolutely necessary.

Most of the threats appear to be aimed at Sharon, who has been vilified by ultranationalists ever since his turnaround from being the darling of the Jewish settler movement to a leader bent on withdrawing from Gaza and the northern West Bank.

<B>Tight security around Sharon</B>

Grafitti threatening him with death and doctored photographs of Sharon dressed in a Stalinist uniform with the words ?The Dictator? have become increasingly common, drawing comparisons to the sort of incitement that preceded the Rabin assassination.

Recounting to fellow Likud members last week threats he had received over his Gaza plan, Sharon said he once heard catcalls that his late wife, Lili, was waiting for him to join her. ?I was shocked, but what has stunned me even more was that I did not see any minister or member of parliament open their mouths on the matter?, Sharon said.

Security around Sharon is so tight that he is often seen surrounded by more than a dozen bodyguards. But a columnist for Yedioth Ahronoth suggested that Jewish extremists might try to thwart his security detail by killing him in a suicide bombing.

?The question is not whether an attempt will be made on the prime minister?s life, the question is how?, wrote Alex Fishman.

Other officials, including lawmakers in the right-wing Likud party, complain they are under intense pressure from ultranationalist party supporters who have threatened them with political consequences if they support the pullout from Gaza.

Pressure will likely rise ahead of upcoming key votes, including a cabinet vote in March to approve the evacuation of all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank.

<B>Megan GOLDIN</B>