Dov Shilansky, a Likud hard-liner with a penchant for provocation and confrontation, was elected speaker of the 12th Knesset on Monday.
It was the opening session of the new parliament, by tradition a festive occasion.
That it turned out to be the most raucous and bitter opening session in memory seemed to some observers to be a foretaste of things to come should the next government be a narrowly based coalition of Likud with the right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties.
Labor and its left-wing allies had hoped to postpone the vote for a week, hopeful apparently that a new government would have been installed by then.
But the acting speaker, Yair Sprinzak of the extremist Moledet faction, ruled that the vote be held immediately.
Shilansky was an easy winner, getting the votes of Likud, the far right and the ultra-Orthodox. Laborites, centrists and left-wingers managed 55 votes for Shlomo Hillel, the Laborite who was speaker of the last Knesset.
Shilansky, a Likud veteran, headed the 11th Knesset’s Interior Committee. He made a habit of leading committee members on tours of Jewish-Arab trouble spots in Jerusalem and around the country.
But in a brief acceptance speech Monday, Shilansky promised to govern the Knesset according to the rules, not ideology.
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