Donald Trump has said Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, “will not be arrested” if he visits the US.
His comments came days after Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor, said he was exploring whether his administration could arrest Netanyahu if he visits the city during the UN general assembly in September.
In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump said Netanyahu, who has been the subject of an international criminal court arrest warrant since November 2024 over alleged war crimes in Gaza, “will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form while in the United States of America”.
Trump added that Netanyahu is “fighting against the Islamic Republic of Iran” and said “the only ones that should be arrested are the people that led Iran into this unprecedented spiral of death and destruction”.
Speaking to the New York Times on Saturday, Mamdani had said: “I believe that prime minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague,” where the international criminal court is based, adding: “He’s a war criminal who has been charged by the international criminal court, and what you will find is that is an opinion that is held by many, purely because of what his actions have wrought over these past many years.”
Mamdani, who has described Israel’s war on Gaza as a genocide, also said he is in “an active conversation” with New York City’s law department about his legal authority to direct the New York police to detain Netanyahu. “Whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that’s what we will do,” he said, adding: “But we won’t be writing our own laws to that end.”
Although the US does not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction and is not a party to the court, Mamdani pledged during his mayoral campaign last September that he would arrest Netanyahu if he traveled to New York. “It is my desire to ensure that this be a city that stands up for international law,” he said.
Other Israeli leaders, including Yoav Gallant, the country’s former defense minister, as well as the Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif, have also been the subject of ICC arrest warrants. The court accused the Israeli leaders of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including “starvation as a method of warfare, and … murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts”.
