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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani walked back his campaign promise to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, conceding Tuesday that the city has no legal power to pull it off.
Getting into it: Mamdani made the announcement in a video posted to X that night, capping months of doubling down on a pledge he could not deliver. In a statement, he said, “My administration has reviewed every avenue available under applicable law to determine whether New York City could execute the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant if Benjamin Netanyahu came here. It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant.”
He then kicked it to Washington, DC. “The federal government, however, does, and I call on them to join the ICC and execute this warrant,” he said, adding that Netanyahu “is not welcome in New York City, nor is any other war criminal at large.” He did not soften his language about the prime minister, calling him “a war criminal, the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people.”
The reversal landed a day after President Donald Trump vowed it would never happen while Netanyahu was in the US, writing on Truth Social that the prime minister “will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form,” and casting the Israeli leader as an ally fighting Iran. Israel hit back separately. Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon posted, “Zohran Mamdani, ENOUGH. Enough with the blood libels,” telling the mayor he “was elected to serve New Yorkers, not Hamas’ propaganda.”
Netanyahu’s office, which has branded the ICC a “kangaroo court” with “no jurisdiction over Americans or Israelis,” said the mayor should focus on fixing New York’s problems, while Netanyahu himself said he was “not concerned.”
This all comes as Netanyahu prepares to visit New York in September for the UN General Assembly, nearly a year after the Israel-Hamas war ended under a US-backed peace plan. The conflict killed roughly 1,200 people in Israel, according to official figures, and more than 73,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
