July 24 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been discharged on Monday after undergoing an intervention on Sunday to place a pacemaker, as confirmed by the Israeli newspaper ‘The Jerusalem Post’.
“I feel very good, but I listen to my doctors,” Netanyahu said in a video posted on social media before the operation. Likewise, he anticipated that he would be discharged during the day on Monday and stated that he could go to Parliament ahead of a key vote on the bill to reform the judicial system.
Thus, the Israeli prime minister, popularly known as ‘Bibi’, hopes to be able to vote in favor of the elimination of the so-called “sensible clause”, a judicial supervision mechanism over government decisions, within the framework of the controversial reform that he is promoting and which, according to his critics, represents an attack against the separation of powers.
The US president, Joe Biden, has demanded in the last hours that Netanyahu “do not rush” when it comes to moving forward with the reform and has maintained in statements to the Axios portal that “it seems” that the government’s proposal -made up of far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties- “is becoming more divisive, instead of less”.
“Given the level of threats and challenges facing Israel right now, it makes no sense for Israeli leaders to rush into this. They should focus on bringing people closer and finding consensus,” he stressed, amid calls from the opposition to revive talks to try to reach consensus on the project, which has sparked massive popular mobilizations.
The Knesset is debating the third reading of the bill led by Netanyahu to annul the so-called “sensible clause” that enables the courts to annul a government decision if they consider that it goes against the democratic system. Meanwhile, the country’s president, Isaac Herzog, has presented a new proposal to try to reach an agreement, which has been joined by the opposition leader, Yair Lapid.
Critics of the judicial reform argue that it is an attack on Israel’s balance of powers, fundamentally on the foundations on which democracy is based, since it gives Parliament unusual influence to overturn judicial decisions.
