New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has said that, if elected in November, he would instruct the city’s police department to arrest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he travel to the city.
Mamdani, the Democratic nominee in the 4 November election, made the remarks in an interview with the New York Times published on Friday.
He alleged that Netanyahu was a war criminal responsible for genocide through Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Mamdani said he would act on an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant issued in November 2024 for Netanyahu over alleged war crimes, and would have him detained at the airport if he entered New York while Mamdani was mayor.
“This is something that I intend to fulfil,” Mamdani told the Times, repeating a pledge made earlier in his campaign. “It is my desire to ensure that this be a city that stands up for international law.”
Under New York’s governance structure, the police commissioner serves at the mayor’s discretion. However, the Times cited legal experts who said such an arrest would be “a practical impossibility” and could place Mamdani in direct conflict with the federal government.
The United States is not a party to the ICC and does not recognise its jurisdiction. The court, based in The Hague, Netherlands, has faced longstanding opposition from Washington. In February, President Donald Trump imposed economic sanctions on the ICC, arguing it had no authority over the US or Israel.
Netanyahu, speaking in July alongside Trump, said he was “not concerned” about Mamdani’s stated intentions. He suggested he might travel with Trump and added, “we’ll see” if he was arrested. Trump responded at the time that Mamdani “better behave otherwise, he’s going to have big problems”.
The Times noted that polling indicates New Yorkers now generally express greater sympathy for Palestinians than for Israel in the ongoing conflict with Hamas. Nonetheless, Mamdani’s comments are expected to provoke strong reactions in a city that is home to the world’s second-largest Jewish population after Tel Aviv.
A poll released on Wednesday by Emerson College Polling, PIX11 and The Hill showed Mamdani, a democratic socialist and current state assemblyman, leading former New York governor Andrew Cuomo by 15 percentage points with less than two months until election day. Cuomo is running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani in June.
Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa and incumbent mayor Eric Adams, who is also standing as an independent, trailed both Mamdani and Cuomo in the survey.
Reports have suggested that advisers to Trump, a Republican and New York native, are seeking to engineer a two-candidate race between Mamdani and Cuomo, potentially by offering future presidential administration positions to Adams and Sliwa.
A separate Times/Siena University poll indicated that Mamdani’s lead over Cuomo would narrow to four percentage points if Adams and Sliwa withdrew from the contest. Both Adams and Sliwa have said they have no intention of leaving the race.
The election is set to determine the leadership of one of the world’s most prominent cities at a time of heightened political tensions over foreign policy and international law.
