Avigdor Lieberman, the new foreign minister of Israel, was questioned by the national fraud squad for more than seven hours on Thursday, according to a police spokesman, as part of a longstanding investigation into suspicions of bribery, money laundering and breach of trust.
Also Thursday, a Palestinian wielding a pickax killed an Israeli boy, 13, and wounded another, 7, in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank before fleeing, witnesses and the Israeli authorities said.
Israeli officials said that the father of the wounded 7-year-old, Ofer Gamliel, is serving a 15-year prison term for planting a bomb outside a Palestinian girls’ school in Jerusalem in 2002. But there was no evidence that the attack on the boy was retaliatory.
Mr. Lieberman caused an uproar on Wednesday, his first day as foreign minister, declaring in a blunt speech that Israel was not obligated to continue an American-backed peace effort with the Palestinians, started at a conference in Annapolis, Md., in late 2007.
The police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, said the interrogation did not come as a surprise but was coordinated with Mr. Lieberman several days in advance.
Mr. Lieberman is part of the new government led by Benjamin Netanyahu and his conservative Likud Party, which was sworn in late Tuesday. Mr. Lieberman leads the hawkish party, Yisrael Beiteinu, an important partner in the governing coalition and the third largest party in Parliament.
Critics of Mr. Lieberman were outraged at the outcome of the recent coalition negotiations, which put Yisrael Beiteinu in charge of the Ministry of Public Security, which is responsible for the police.
The new public security minister, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, is highly regarded as a former deputy commissioner of the national police. Nevertheless, police officials expressed surprise when Mr. Lieberman, the party chief, took the unusual step of turning up at Mr. Aharonovitch’s inauguration ceremony on Wednesday.
The police have been investigating Mr. Lieberman’s business dealings for 13 years, but he has never been charged. He has frequently railed against the police, accusing them of persecution.
Mr. Aharonovitch said Thursday that he had no intention of intervening in the investigations of public figures, and Mr. Lieberman’s office said that he had fully cooperated with the police investigators.
The police spokesman said that the investigation was continuing and that Mr. Lieberman would be questioned again.
The teenager killed in Bat Ayin, a settlement south of Jerusalem, Shlomo Nativ, was attacked around midday outside a youth club about 50 yards from his home. Witnesses said he managed to reach the house, where he collapsed and died.
Several Palestinian groups claimed responsibility for the attack — among them Islamic Jihad and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group linked to the Fatah movement of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas — but the authorities did not rule out the possibility that the assailant was acting alone.
“The new Israeli government will have a zero-tolerance policy toward these sorts of terrorist attacks and refuses to accept them as routine,” said Mark Regev, a government spokesman. “The Palestinian government must both in word and in deed also have a zero-tolerance policy to demonstrate its commitment to peace and reconciliation.”
Officials in the new government, which is dominated by right-wing and religious parties, have signaled a new approach toward the Palestinians, involving fewer Israeli concessions and more proof from the Palestinian side that it wants peace.
An official in the prime minister’s office, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, noted that Mr. Abbas, the Palestinian president, had used “strong language” to attack Mr. Netanyahu on Wednesday, calling him a man who “does not believe in peace.”
Instead of giving “fiery speeches,” the Israeli official suggested, “perhaps Mr. Abbas and his people could do more to fight terrorism. There is clearly much to be done.”
Bat Ayin, home to about a thousand Israelis, is in the Etzion settlement bloc. Israel intends to keep the area under any future peace accord with the Palestinians, who demand the whole of the West Bank as part of an independent Palestinian state.
Shocked residents of Bat Ayin wept and embraced one another in the aftermath of the attack. Daniel Kohn, the New York-born rabbi of the community, said by telephone that there was “on the one hand a great desire here for conciliation and peace in this land.” But, he added, any peace would have to be based on “a very firm conviction of our place here.”
Rabbi Kohn described the boy killed in the attack, whom he said he had known well, as “sweet and pure, very devoted spiritually, and involved in giving in private and modest ways.”
Avinoam Maimon, 45, a resident of Bat Ayin, described how he struggled with the assailant and managed to disarm him before he escaped.
Shaul Goldstein, the leader of the regional Etzion council, said he hoped that the new government would reinstate money cut from the budget to help the army protect the residents of “Judea and Samaria,” using the biblical name for the West Bank.
Rina Castelnuovo contributed reporting from Bat Ayin, West Bank.
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