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JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to act forcefully to stamp out violence and the threat of violence in Israeli society.

"I will simply not tolerate a climate of lawlessness, a climate of threat," the premier said this week in a pre-Rosh Hashanah interview with representatives of the American Jewish media.

He was referring to the current wave of anonymous threats against Israel's Chief Justice Aharon Barak and other Supreme Court justices.

The court's policy of "judicial activism" is at the center of a major political controversy in Israel and has been the subject of recent vitriolic criticism in ultra-religious newspapers.

In the wake of the controversy, some have warned against the potential for violence, comparing the current war of words to the climate that preceded the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in November.

But Netanyahu said it would be wrong to characterize Israel as "a violent society."

The divisions within Israel and within Jewry "are not stronger than the forces that unite us," said the prime minister, who is scheduled to arrive in the United States next week.

Yet the fact remains that Netanyahu was elected by a tiny margin in May. Polls in the United States show that American Jews are also divided over Netanyahu.

Netanyahu's interview with American Jewish media came before he met Wednesday with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Turning to the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, Netanyahu said both sides will come to the table with lists of the other's alleged violations of existing agreements.

The Israeli list, he said, would include concerns about Palestinian violations of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem; the Palestinians' failure, in the government's view, to abrogate fully the Palestine National Covenant and replace it with another document; and violations involving inflammatory rhetoric, such as Arafat's exhortations at the end of last week to Palestinians to hold a demonstrative mass prayer at the Al-Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem.

On the controversial issue of Hebron, the premier said he proposed to carry out the redeployment agreement that was concluded between the Palestinians and Israel, with "necessary modifications."

Netanyahu's decision on Hebron, which is the last major Palestinian city still under Israeli control, is seen by many as an indication of his commitment to carry out the accords with the Palestinians.

In discussing Hebron, Netanyahu said the previous Labor government had failed to carry out the redeployment in Hebron on schedule — for security reasons.

An estimated 450 Jews — and some 100,000 Palestinians — live in the Hebron area.

Israel's interests in Hebron are twofold, the premier said: to ensure the "safety and well-being" of the Jewish community there, and to ensure "control and access to the holy places."

Given that Hebron was "a junction of two of the most radical communities" of both Jews and Palestinians, he said, it was "in the Palestinian interest as well as in the Israeli interest" that security arrangements be established in Hebron that would avoid any danger of violence in the future.

As for the "permanent-status" talks with the Palestinians, Netanyahu said he felt that there was "a much wider consensus in Israel" regarding the shape of a final settlement than was often thought.

Israelis who say they favor Palestinian independence nevertheless insist that a future Palestinian state must have no army, no capacity to affect control of Israeli airspace, no capacity to drain Israel's water sources and no unfettered right to admit Palestinians who wish to return to the territory.

"Perhaps [the differences] are semantic," Netanyahu added. "The government has got to get down to the delineation of what we call the autonomous entity."

In considering such an entity, he asked, "Should it [include] the largely barren areas of Judea and Samaria?"

Israel, he added, had "security and other" interests in these areas.

On the Syrian track, the prime minister said the United States was "trying to facilitate the resumption" of the stalled peace talks, but so far Syria had "shown no interest."

Netanyahu insisted that he would not undertake prior to new talks any commitment to withdraw Israeli forces from the Golan — just as Israel was not laying down any preconditions to Syria.

When the talks with Syria resume, Israel is expected to put forward its proposal to negotiate an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon first and Syria, presumably, would put forward its demand that Israel withdraw from all of the Golan. On the attacks against the Supreme Court and the exacerbation of religious-secular tensions in Israel, Netanyahu said his position was one of faithful adherence to the unwritten "status quo" accord that regulates state-synagogue relations.

That accord has traditionally given the Orthodox establishment control over religious affairs and institutions. It has been in existence for 50 years. Netanyahu said he was not about to change it.

At the same time, changes have been "evolving slowly," he said. "You can have films on Saturday in one part of a town and streets closed elsewhere, depending on demographic shifts."

Any attempt to force a "reordering" of society along new religious-secular lines was bound to lead to "extreme consequences," Netanyahu said.

The prime minister said that it was legitimate to argue over the extent of the Supreme Court's powers vis-a-vis the Knesset.

But he said he had given firm orders to Public Security Minister Avigdor Kahalani to act forcefully against threats of violence against the judges.

The prime minister sidestepped a question on whether he would oppose demands to change how Supreme Court justices are appointed.

The religious parties, and some voices on the secular right, have called for a new system in order to ensure a broader spectrum of ideological opinions on the bench.

They maintain that the court's current composition is predominantly liberal and secular.