New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said his office is still looking into the possibility of arresting Benjamin Netanyahu if the Israeli prime minister visits the city for the United Nations General Assembly in September.

Mr Mamdani, who stated this in the “The Interview” podcast published on Saturday, said, “I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague. 

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, earlier announced that Mr Netanyahu “will come to New York, address the United Nations General Assembly with pride and stand before the world to state Israel’s truth and its unwavering right to defend its citizens.”

The New York mayor, who described Mr Netanyahu as a “war criminal”, recalled that the International Criminal Court had charged the Israeli leader. 

“And what you will find is that it is an opinion that is held by many purely because of what his actions have wrought over these last many years,” he added.

Mr Mamdani further noted that his administration’s legal department is weighing the option of arresting the Israeli leader as determined by the law.

“That’s an active conversation with our legal department. However, what we’ve seen at the national level is a desire sometimes to write your own laws, to go outside the bounds of legality. That’s not something we have an interest in.

“Whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that’s what we will do. But we won’t be writing our own laws to that end,” he said.

Mr Mamdani is a critic of the Israeli government who has often flayed Israel’s war in Gaza as an indefensible genocide.

During his election campaign last year, the New York leader said in an interview with The Times that he would order the Police Department to arrest Mr Netanyahu.

He noted that such an arrest would be honouring a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court over Mr Netanyahu’s role in the war in Gaza, which he and a United Nations commission had described as a genocide.

However, Mr Netanyahu, in a recent radio appearance, downplayed Mr Mamdani’s arrest threats, saying he was not concerned.

“He’s with the terror actors. And I think the problem is that he doesn’t recognise and he doesn’t care that those who hate the Jews and Israel ultimately hate America,” Mr Netanyahu said.