The heat wave in Israel has reached Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who, after feeling unwell at home in the northern town of Caesarea, was taken to the emergency department of Sheba Hospital (Tel Hashomer) to undergo exhaustive medical tests. Minutes after the 73-year-old conservative leader entered the medical center near Tel Aviv and to dispel the growing rumors, his spokespersons reported that he was “well and fully conscious.”
But the doubts were completely put to rest two hours later with the reassuring words of Netanyahu himself in a video recorded in the hospital. “Yesterday I was with my wife in the Kineret (Sea of ??Galilee) under the sun and without a cap or water. It was not a good idea,” he said on camera.
“Thank God, I feel very well but I only have one request for all of you: we are going through a heat wave in the country so I ask you to be less in the sun and drink more water and that we all have a good week”, he added, definitively removing the fears in Israel from a scenario similar to that of January 4, 2006 when the then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was urgently evacuated to the Hadassah Ein Karem Hospital in Jerusalem due to a stroke that ended up being fatal. The doctors decided that Netanyahu remained this Saturday night under observation at Sheba Hospital. The arrival of his main cardiologists raised doubts in the networks that the cause of his hospital admission was really just dehydration. In the afternoon, Channel 13 had reported that he fell after fainting at his house. He is expected to leave this Sunday. For now, the weekly meeting of the Government scheduled for this Sunday morning has been postponed to this Monday.
According to various sources, at noon this Saturday and during the Shabbat rest day, he suffered chest pains and slight dizziness at his private residence in northern Israel. The paramedic from the personal protection service (unit 730) of the internal security agency that always accompanies the prime minister made the decision to take him to the largest hospital in Israel as a precaution to carry out the relevant tests. There he was accompanied by his wife Sara and one of his sons, Avner. The hospital decided to keep him hospitalized overnight to be able to leave this Sunday. Like the rest of the fractured and confronted Israeli political class, the head of the opposition and former prime minister, Yair Lapid, wished him a “complete recovery and health . That you feel good”.
On the Yom Kippur Fast Day early last October, Netanyahu felt unwell and was admitted to Hadassah Ein Karem Hospital in Jerusalem.
There are few positions in the world that carry as much pressure and anxiety as the Prime Minister of Israel. Today, it is even higher. Beyond the heat wave, Netanyahu faces a monumental political, social and economic storm in a country more divided than ever.
On the one hand, the usual security problems that his country must face and that in recent weeks have focused on the unstable situation in the north of the West Bank and, above all, on the growing tension with the pro-Iranian Lebanese group Hezbollah on the border with Lebanon precisely when 17 years have passed since its last great war.
On the other hand, Israel is experiencing an unprecedented internal civil crisis – including damage to the economy, the reserve service and the relationship with the United States – as a result of the government’s judicial reform proposal launched in January that, although Netanyahu froze to a large extent, it continues to unleash massive demonstrations such as those that have taken place this Saturday for the twenty-eighth consecutive week in Tel Aviv and in a hundred places in the country.
“We will continue to take to the streets until Bibi and the radicals with whom she has allied do not announce that they are discarding laws that end judicial independence and therefore democracy,” protester Avner Livni, armed with a flag of Israel on Kaplan street in Tel Aviv. This area, converted into the great scene of the protests, again brought together more than 100,000 people like every Saturday to launch slogans against the Government and its judicial proposal.
Netanyahu is under enormous pressure. Beyond the trial that is taking place in Jerusalem for alleged corruption and the harsh criticism of the Biden Administration, from his coalition they ask him to follow the legislative initiative “to finally achieve a balance between the executive and judicial powers” and “not give in to the demands of the protesters that alter life in Israel” while the opposition in the Knesset and on the street demand that he “stop the laws that weaken the judiciary and destroy democracy”.
The goal of the most right-wing coalition in Israel’s history is to pass before the parliamentary recess (end of the month) a law that would significantly limit the so-called “reasonableness test.” This is one of the parameters of the Supreme Court to annul decisions and appointments of the Government.
At the end of last December, Netanyahu returned to power after a year and a half leading the opposition to the heterogeneous coalition led by the centrist Yair Lapid and the conservative Naftali Bennett. With 32 seats (out of 120 in the Knesset), the Likud won the elections on November 1. Thanks to 32 seats from two ultra-Orthodox parties and two other ultra-nationalists, Netanyahu formed his sixth government in his long career. In this way, he also consolidated his status as the country’s longest-serving prime minister (96-99; 2009-2021; December 29, 2022 -…) surpassing the first head of government who was also the one who declared the Independence of Israel in 1948, David Ben Gurion.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
