Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu underwent surgery early Sunday morning in which he was successfully implanted with a pacemaker, official sources reported, which specified that the president is in good condition and could be discharged during the day.

“The medical procedure the prime minister underwent was successfully completed. The prime minister is feeling well and will remain at Sheba Hospital for observation, and is expected to be released later in the day,” a statement from Netanyahu’s office said.

The 73-year-old president was discharged precisely a week ago after being hospitalized in an emergency at Sheba Hospital, the largest in the country. Israeli media claimed that she had fainted after feeling chest pain, but the official version was that he had suffered from dehydration.

“The prime minister came hereI went last week because he had a faint and for this reason he underwent a series of cardiac and non-cardiac tests. As he had a conduction disorder that we knew about many years ago, we decided to perform an electrophysiological study,” Roy Beinart, director of the Davidai Center for arrhythmias at Sheba Hospital, explained at the time in a video released by the medical center.

“All the results were fine. That’s why we decided to implement a monitoring system, which is like a recorder that works 24 hours to record your heart rate. We received data from this monitor last night suggesting transient atrioventricular block and this was the indication for emergency pacemaker implantation,” he added.

For his part, Eyal Nof, head of the invasive electrophysiology service at Sheba Hospital, confirmed the “implantation of the pacemaker” in an intervention in which “everything turned out favourably.” “The prime minister is feeling very well this morning,” he stressed. The weekly Cabinet meeting originally scheduled for today has been postponed until further notice.

Netanyahu’s health misadventure occurs while the president faces a lengthy trial for corruption and on the eve of the final vote in Parliament on the first law of the controversial judicial reform that promotes the president to give more power to the executive to the detriment of Justice.

This initiative has polarized the country, provoked more massive demonstrations of the recent history of Israel and strained relations with the United Statesthe largest partner of the Jewish state.

During the medical procedure this morning, the Minister of Justice, Yariv Levin, architect of the reform and a great ally of Netayahu, replaced the Prime Minister. In October, Netanyahu was hospitalized at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center after feeling unwell while praying in a synagogue, but he was released the next morning after undergoing tests and staying overnight for observation.

Together with his ultra-Orthodox and ultra-nationalist allies, won the November 2022 elections after having been in power for various periods: 1996-1999 and 2009-2021, a total of 15 years, the longest serving prime minister in Israel.

Since he began his second term in 2009, Netanyahu, leader of the liberal right-wing Likud partyHe has not formally appointed an interim prime minister, temporarily appointing a close minister to replace him when he traveled abroad or underwent scheduled medical procedures.