Netanyahu to Attend Controversial Judicial Reform Vote after Emergency Pacemaker Surgery

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Sunday that he is doing "excellently” following emergency pacemaker surgery — and plans to vote Monday to launch controversial judicial reforms.

The proposed changes have triggered wide-scale protests in Israel and have triggered the nation's worst domestic crisis in decades, Reuters noted.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog met Netanyahu in the hospital on Sunday following his surgery in the hope of healing rifts over the judicial changes between the religious-nationalist ruling coalition and opposition parties.

“This is an emergency. Agreement must be reached,” Herzog, who mediated fruitless March-June talks, said in a statement, Reuters reported.

The Knesset, where Netanyahu wields a comfortable majority, is due Monday to hold final readings before a vote on the prime minister's highly controversial bill dramatically limiting Supreme Court powers to overrule some government decisions.

It would be the first reform of a set of changes that critics say will radically reduce judicial independence and cede far more power to the government.

Netanyahu, 73, is currently battling corruption charges which he denies.

“As you can see, I am doing excellently,” he said in a video statement that showed him seated, smiling and wearing a blazer, Reuters reported

“We are pursuing efforts to complete the legislation, as well as efforts to do this through consensus, but in any event I want you to know that tomorrow morning I’ll be joining my colleagues in the Knesset," he said.

Netanyahu early Sunday local time was rushed to the hospital to receive a pacemaker after a heart monitor showed he had transient heart block, according to Eyal Nof, head of Invasive Electrophysiology Service at the Sheba Medical Center on Sunday.

“He was admitted urgently to Sheba Medical Center,” the doctor said in a video statement. “During the night we implanted a pacemaker. All went well. The prime minister is feeling very well this morning.”

The operation was seamless, and occurred “without any complications,” his doctors said. 

A pacemaker is a device surgically implanted under the skin to control irregular or slow heartbeats, according to the Cleveland Clinic. A slow or irregular heartbeat can deprive your organs of oxygen and cause you to pass out. Most patients who require a pacemaker are older, with the average patient being more than 60 years old.

After receiving the surgery, Netanyahu “is not in a life-threatening condition,” said Roy Beinart, director at the Davidai Arrhythmia Center, the heart institute at Sheba Medical Center.

Critics of Netanyahu's judicial plan include members of the Israeli military and reservists — who have threatened to stop reporting for duty if it goes through —  as well as the country’s former Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

In a letter expressing criticism, Barak and others wrote that the “legislation is crushing those things shared by Israeli society, is tearing the people apart, disintegrating the IDF and inflicting fatal blows on Israel’s security.”