New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) said Tuesday that the city does not have the legal authority to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, walking back a pledge he made repeatedly during his 2025 mayoral campaign and reiterated as recently as last week.
Legal experts had said as much for over a year. Because the United States is not a signatory to the Rome Statute that created the ICC, US courts and law enforcement do not recognize or enforce its warrants—meaning a mayor never had independent authority to execute one, or to invent a city-level warrant by executive order.
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), a Mamdani ally, said during the campaign that “The City of New York has no jurisdiction to do such a thing,” according to Fox News.
“It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant,” Mamdani said in a video posted to social media, referring to the 2024 International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant charging Netanyahu with war crimes and crimes against humanity tied to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, where the Palestinian death toll has surpassed 73,000, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. “The federal government, however, does, and I call on them to join the ICC and execute this warrant,” he added.
The reversal caps months of escalating rhetoric on the subject. He first raised the possibility in a December 2024 interview with journalist Mehdi Hasan, while running for mayor: “No. As mayor, New York City would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu. This is a city that our values are in line with international law. It’s time that our actions are also,” he told Hasan.
He repeated the pledge after his election, telling The New York Times that his administration would pursue “whatever the law allows me to do in New York City,” while insisting “we won’t be writing our own laws to that end,” Al Jazeera reported.
The issue resurfaced this month amid expectations that Netanyahu will travel to New York in September for the United Nations General Assembly, with Mamdani saying his administration was in “active conversation” with the city’s law department over whether the NYPD could be directed to execute the ICC warrant during that visit.
President Trump rejected the idea days later. “Benjamin Netanyahu will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America,” Trump wrote in a social media post. Mamdani didn’t back down right away: “As I’ve said, I agree with the ICC that Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested and tried for his crimes, as I do for anyone else charged by the ICC,” he said.
By Tuesday, Mamdani said a legal review by his administration had concluded the city couldn’t act on its own. He kept his characterization of Netanyahu even as he dropped the arrest threat: “I want to be equally clear: Benjamin Netanyahu is not welcome in New York City, nor is any other war criminal at large,” he said in the video.
Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., dismissed the reversal. “You were elected to serve New Yorkers, not Hamas’ propaganda,” he wrote on social media. “Do your job!”
The ICC issued its warrant for Netanyahu in November 2024, finding reason to believe he and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant used “starvation as a method of warfare” and intentionally targeted civilians during the Gaza campaign. The US does not currently recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction over Israeli or American nationals.
Mamdani’s appeal to Washington comes as the federal government moves in the opposite direction. Republican Secretary of State Marco Rubio launched a campaign on Jul. 13 to “dismantle” the ICC “brick by brick,” citing the court’s Netanyahu warrant among his grievances and warning that nations relying on US assistance would face pressure to abandon the tribunal.
Netanyahu is still expected in New York in September for the U.N. General Assembly.
