Global Courant
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said early Sunday that he was going to the hospital for an emergency procedure to get a pacemaker, but vowed to continue with his controversial judicial review plan.
In a short videotaped statement released at 2 a.m. local time, Netanyahu said he was fitted with a surveillance device after being briefly hospitalized last week for dehydration, as his office had said. He said an alarm beeped on the device on Saturday night, meaning he needed a pacemaker immediately.
“I feel great, but I listen to my doctors,” he said.
In a brief statement, Netanyahu’s office said Israel’s leader would be placed under anesthesia. A top deputy, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, would replace him.
Netanyahu’s office made the announcement as Israel faces widespread street protests over Netanyahu’s contentious judicial overhaul plan. The plan has sparked months of protests, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets Saturday night to demonstrate against the plan ahead of a major parliamentary vote on Monday.
Levin is the mastermind behind the overhaul plan.
Netanyahu’s office said the prime minister would receive the pacemaker at Israel’s Sheba Hospital, where he also received treatment last week.
Netanyahu said he expected to be released from hospital on Sunday and go to the Knesset or parliament pending the expected vote on his revision.
At the same time, he said he hoped to reach an agreement with his opponents.
A pacemaker is used when a patient’s heart is beating too slowly, which can lead to fainting, according to the National Institutes of Health. It can also be used to treat heart failure. By sending electrical pulses to the heart, the device increases or maintains a person’s heart rate at a normal rhythm, allowing the heart to pump blood to the body at a normal rate.
Meanwhile, on Saturday night, tens of thousands of protesters marched into Jerusalem and hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets in Tel Aviv and other cities in a last-ditch effort to block Netanyahu’s contentious judicial review.
Also on Saturday, more than 100 former Israeli security chiefs signed a letter imploring the Israeli prime minister to halt the legislation, and thousands of additional military reservists said they would no longer report, protesting the plan.
In scorching heat reaching 33 C (91 F), the procession to Jerusalem turned the city’s main entrance into a sea of blue and white Israeli flags as protesters completed the final leg of a four-day, 70-kilometer (45-mile) march from Tel Aviv to the Israeli parliament.
The protesters, who grew from hundreds to thousands over the course of the march, were welcomed into Jerusalem by crowds of cheering protesters before encamping in rows of small white tents outside the Knesset, or parliament, for Monday’s expected vote. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands flooded the streets of the coastal city of Tel Aviv, the country’s business and cultural capital, as well as in Beersheba, Haifa and Netanya.
Netanyahu and his far-right allies argue the overhaul is necessary to curb what they believe is excessive powers of unelected judges. But their critics say the plan will destroy the country’s system of checks and balances and set it on a path to authoritarian rule.
US President Joe Biden has urged Netanyahu to drop the plan and seek broad consensus.
The proposed overhaul has drawn harsh criticism from business and medical leaders, and a rapidly growing number of military reservists in key units have said they will stop reporting if the plan passes, raising concerns that the country’s security interests could be compromised. Another 10,000 reservists announced Saturday night that they were suspending their service, according to “Brothers in Arms,” a protest group representing retired soldiers.
More than 100 former top security chiefs, including retired military commanders, police commissioners and intelligence chiefs, joined those calls on Saturday, signing a letter to Netanyahu blaming him for compromising the Israeli military and urging him to halt the legislation.
Signatories included Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister, and Moshe Yaalon, a former army chief and defense minister. Both are Netanyahu’s political rivals.
“The legislation crushes the things shared by Israeli society, tears the people apart, disintegrates the IDF and deals deadly blows to Israel’s security,” the former officials wrote.
“The legislative process violates the social contract that has existed for 75 years between the Israeli government and thousands of reserve officers and soldiers from the land, air, naval and intelligence services who have volunteered for years for the reserves to defend the democratic state of Israel, and now with a broken heart announce that they are suspending their volunteer work,” the letter said.
Israel Katz, a senior cabinet minister from Netanyahu’s Likud party, said the bill will pass one way or another on Monday.
“I represent citizens who are not ready to have their vote canceled because of threats of refusal to serve” or by those blocking the airport, highways and train stations, he told Channel 12 TV. “There is a clear attempt here to use military service to force the government to change its policies.”
After seven consecutive months of the most sustained and intense demonstrations the country has ever seen, the grassroots protest movement has reached a fever pitch.
Parliament is expected to vote on Monday on a measure that would limit the Supreme Court’s oversight powers by preventing judges from overturning government decisions because they are “unreasonable”.
Proponents say the current “reasonableness” standard gives judges excessive powers over decision-making by elected officials. But critics say scrapping the default, which is only invoked on rare occasions, would allow the government to make arbitrary decisions, make improper appointments or dismissals and open the door to corruption.
Monday’s vote would be the first major piece of legislation to pass.
The overhaul also requires other sweeping changes aimed at curtailing the powers of the judiciary, from limiting the Supreme Court’s ability to challenge parliamentary decisions to changing the way judges are selected.
Protesters, who make up much of Israeli society, see the overhaul as a power grab fueled by various personal and political grievances from Netanyahu, who is on trial on corruption charges, and his associates, who want to deepen Israel’s control over the occupied West Bank and perpetuate controversial draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men.
In a speech Thursday, Netanyahu doubled down on the revision, dismissing charges that the plan would destroy Israel’s democratic foundations as absurd.
“This is an attempt to mislead you about something that has no basis in reality,” he said. Alarmed by the growing mass of reservists refusing to serve, the country’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant pushed for Monday’s vote to be postponed, according to reports in Israeli media. It was unclear whether others would join him.