Netanyahu will undergo surgery this Sunday and Minister of Justice takes office

“During a routine examination carried out on Saturday night, the 74-year-old prime minister was diagnosed with a hernia,” the statement said.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Justice, Yariv Levin, will be acting prime minister, according to the Government leader’s office.

Netanyahu was hospitalized in July at the Sheba medical center in Tel Hahomer to have a pacemaker implanted after he fainted.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history, is facing one of the biggest crises in the country’s history since Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israeli soil on October 7, to which Israel responded by launching a war in Israel. Gaza Strip, where the Palestinian Islamist movement took power in 2007.

Tonight, a four-day protest against the government begins in Jerusalem, which for the first time will also include the families of hostages kidnapped by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and which will call on the political class to reach an agreement to release the prisoners and call new elections.

The protesters will begin a march at 6:15 pm local time (4:15 pm, in Lisbon) through the Givat Ram neighborhood – where Israel’s power structures are located – to the Knesset (parliament), where they intend to camp for four days, during which they will They will also hold nightly protests.

Speakers at the protests include opposition leader Yair Lapid, family members of Hamas victims and hostages, and Moshe Radman, one of the leaders of the protests against judicial reform that took to the streets of Israel in 2023, a movement that has now merged with the of the captives’ families to ask for early elections in the country.