New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani holds a press conference at the New York City Office of Emergency Management, as a major winter storm spreads across a large swath of the United States, in Brooklyn, New York City, US, Jan. 25, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Bing Guan

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani acknowledged Tuesday that the city has no legal authority to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, abandoning one of the most provocative promises of his mayoral campaign while intensifying his rhetorical attacks on the Israeli leader.

In a video posted Tuesday night, Mamdani said city attorneys had explored “every avenue available under applicable law” to determine whether New York could execute the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against Netanyahu.

“It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant,” Mamdani said.

The mayor nevertheless insisted that the federal government possessed such authority and called on Washington to join the ICC and arrest Netanyahu should he enter the United States.

“And I want to be equally clear: Benjamin Netanyahu is not welcome in New York City, nor is any other war criminal at large,” Mamdani said, accusing the Israeli premier of orchestrating a “horrific genocide” against Palestinians.

The statement marked a reversal of a campaign pledge that became a defining symbol of Mamdani’s anti-Israel politics. While running for mayor in 2025, the far-left democratic socialist repeatedly said he would seek to have Netanyahu arrested if the prime minister visited New York, including to attend the annual United Nations General Assembly.

The issue returned to the foreground last week, when Mamdani told The New York Times that his administration remained in “active conversation” with the city’s Law Department about the possibility of arresting Netanyahu.

“I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague,” Mamdani said. “He’s a war criminal who has been charged by the International Criminal Court.”

Mamdani added at the time that his administration would do whatever city law permitted but would not rewrite the law to facilitate an arrest.

His subsequent legal review confirmed what experts had long argued: New York City cannot independently enforce an ICC warrant against a visiting foreign leader.

The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC, and does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction over American or Israeli nationals. The ICC has no police force and relies on cooperating governments, primarily its member states, to execute warrants.

Mamdani’s claim that the federal government could arrest Netanyahu also obscured substantial legal and diplomatic barriers. Federal law restricts American cooperation with the ICC, while visiting heads of government may possess immunity protections beyond the reach of municipal law enforcement.

President Donald Trump responded to the controversy Monday by declaring that Netanyahu “will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America.”

Trump defended Netanyahu as an American ally fighting Iran and rejected Mamdani’s renewed pursuit of the campaign promise.

The ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in November 2024, alleging there were reasonable grounds to believe they bore criminal responsibility for the war crime of using starvation as a method of warfare and for crimes against humanity including murder and persecution.

Israel has vehemently rejected the charges, arguing that the court lacks jurisdiction, disregarded Israel’s independent judicial system, and distorted the conduct of a defensive war launched after the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Israeli and American officials have also accused the ICC of drawing a false moral equivalence between the elected leaders of a democratic state and Hamas terrorists who murdered approximately 1,200 people and abducted 251 others.

Mamdani’s retreat did little to reassure Jewish leaders, who said the mayor had replaced an unworkable threat with inflammatory rhetoric that could further alienate Jewish New Yorkers.

The UJA-Federation of New York accused Mamdani of “political grandstanding” and said his video was “rife with distortions and disinformation.”

“At a time of rising antisemitism, repeatedly singling out and vilifying the world’s only Jewish state for perceived political benefit is repugnant, puts Jews at greater risk — and leaves many Jewish New Yorkers feeling targeted and unwelcome in the city we call home,” the organization said.

Mark Treyger, chief executive of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, argued that Mamdani already knew he lacked the authority to carry out the arrest.

Treyger said the mayor’s continued demand for federal action placed the New York Police Department in an “untenable position,” inflamed tensions, and distracted from pressing municipal responsibilities, including the response to a deadly Legionnaires’ disease outbreak.

The Orthodox Union similarly accused Mamdani of spreading “lies and misinformation that risk inciting further violence against Jews,” calling his statement a betrayal of his commitment to protect all New Yorkers.

Gadi Eisenkot, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces and a prominent political opponent of Netanyahu, described Mamdani’s remarks as “pure antisemitism, with no basis in fact.”

“They are dangerous, inflammatory, and have no place anywhere — certainly not in 2026,” Eisenkot said, accusing Mamdani of equating Israel’s military with the terrorist groups attacking the country.

“We will not allow anyone to question the right of the people of Israel to live in security in their own country,” he added.

Mamdani has long supported boycotts targeting Israel, repeatedly accused the Jewish state of “apartheid” and “genocide,” and declined to affirm Israel’s right to exist specifically as a Jewish state. During the mayoral campaign, he also resisted demands to unequivocally condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada,” language many Jews associate with terrorism and violence against Israelis.

His arrest pledge presented those positions not merely as expressions of personal ideology, but as policies he intended to pursue through the authority of City Hall.

Tuesday’s announcement ended that possibility. Yet Mamdani’s retreat on the law was not accompanied by any moderation of his broader posture toward Israel.

He abandoned the promise that New York City would arrest the Israeli prime minister — and used the occasion to declare that Netanyahu was not welcome there.