NEW YORK — In late 2024, Zohran Mamdani, then a candidate for New York City mayor, pledged in an interview that, if he was elected, he would arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if the premier came to New York.

“As mayor, New York City would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu,” Mamdani told Zeteo. “This is a city that our values are in line with international law. It’s time that our actions are also.”

He dismissed the fact that the US is not a party to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which had issued the arrest warrant for Netanyahu.

“It’s time that we actually step up and make clear what we are willing to do to showcase the leadership that is sorely missing in the federal administration,” he said.

That pledge collapsed on Tuesday night, when Mamdani acknowledged that the city could not carry out an ICC arrest.

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

The statement marked an admission, more than a year and a half after his initial pledge to arrest Netanyahu, that Mamdani had been forced to reckon with the fact that international law does not have any bearing on the city government, despite Mamdani’s repeated description of New York as a “city of international law.”

No way to make the arrest

Mamdani had cited the ICC arrest warrant charging Netanyahu with crimes against humanity and war crimes as grounds for arresting him. The court does not have the power to enforce arrests itself and relies on member states to carry out arrests so defendants can stand trial in The Hague.

Legal scholars had said for more than a year, though, that a New York City mayor could not arrest a foreign head of state for a variety of reasons.

Neither the US nor Israel is party to the ICC, so the court does not have any jurisdiction in the US; foreign affairs are the exclusive purview of the federal government; federal law bars the imprisonment of a foreign head of state and bans any cooperation with the ICC; the NYPD cannot make illegal arrests or take acts that are prohibited by federal law; and New York City cannot extradite defendants to The Hague for trial.

New York City is subject to federal and New York State laws, and both US President Donald Trump and New York Governor Kathy Hochul had said Netanyahu would not be arrested.

The New York City mayor does not have a relationship with international law any more than a small-town mayor in middle America, even though the city is........

© The Times of Israel