JERUSALEM, May 4 – Prime Minister Ehud Olmert won formal approval for his coalition government today, and he told Parliament he was prepared to set Israel’s boundaries during its four-year term.

In laying out the policies of his new government, Mr. Olmert also raised his concerns about Iran and its nuclear program, saying he took seriously the threats to destroy Israel that have been voiced by Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“We must not ignore what the president of Iran says; he means everything he says,” Mr. Olmert told lawmakers.

But Mr. Olmert’s focus was on the borders he hopes to draw, with or without Palestinian involvement.

“The borders of Israel that will be formed in the coming years will be significantly different from the territories under Israel’s control today,” said Mr. Olmert, who has set a target date of 2010 for setting the boundaries.

Mr. Olmert has not specified the exact borders, but he has said that Israel’s West Bank separation barrier will form the basis. Most West Bank settlers live on the Israeli side of the barrier, in large settlement blocs, and the prime minister said these blocs will be strengthened and remain under Israelis control. But tens of thousands live beyond the barrier, and are seen as candidates for evacuation.

“Even if the Jewish eye tears and the heart is broken, we must keep sight of the main principle,” Mr. Olmert said. “We have to maintain a strong and stable Jewish majority in our country.”

Mr. Olmert said he would offer to negotiate with the Palestinians, but with the Palestinian Authority now being run Hamas, the radical Islamic group, there is no prospect of talks at present.

“We will give the Palestinian Authority the opportunity to show that it realizes it has made a mistake,” Mr. Olmert said. “But we won’t wait forever.”

While Palestinians would welcome an Israeli pullback in the West Bank, they seek all of the territory as part of a future state, including a capital in East Jerusalem, and say they will not accept any border drawn unilaterally by Israel.

Mr. Olmert has been the acting prime minister since Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke on Jan. 4 that has left him in a coma. But Mr. Olmert did not formally become the prime minister until today.

The new vice prime minister, the position Mr. Olmert held in the previous government, is Tzipi Livni, who is also the foreign minister.

Mr. Olmert’s centrist Kadima party won the March 28 elections, and Mr. Olmert will head a four-party coalition that controls 67 of the 120 seats in the Parliament, or Knesset.

In addition to Kadima, which has 29 seats, the other parties in the coalition are the left-leaning Labor Party, with 19 seats; Shas, an ultra-Orthodox religious party, which has 12 legislators, and the Pensioners party, which won seven seats in the election.

Mr. Olmert has not said when he might present his proposal for setting the border and withdrawing settlers, though it is expected to takes months of planning.

In the meantime, he is already facing criticism from right-wing parties that oppose the idea.

“There has never been a government that has given up so much ahead of time and relieves the other side of its obligations,” said Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Likud, the largest opposition party in Parliament.

Also, Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party, sparked a heated argument when he said that Arab members of the Israeli Parliament who recently met with Hamas should be put on trial for treason – and he hoped they would be executed.

“The Second World War ended with the Nuremberg trials and the execution of the Nazi leadership,” Mr. Lieberman said. “Not only them, but also those who collaborated with them. I hope that will also be the fate of the collaborators in this house.”

Several Arab legislators responded by calling Mr. Lieberman’s remarks “racist.”