Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar is scheduled to meet with U.S. officials, including U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in Washington this week, the Israeli Foreign Ministry announced on Monday. The meeting with Rubio on Wednesday will be their fourth this year.
Sa’ar will hold talks on Capitol Hill Tuesday with Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John Fetterman (D-Pa.), as well as Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Later in the evening, Sa’ar was slated to sign an agreement with Bolivian Foreign Minister Fernando Aramayo to renew diplomatic relations between Israel and Bolivia, the Foreign Ministry said.
On Monday, Sa’ar dismissed New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s repeated threats to have Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested if he visits the city, saying such rhetoric has no bearing on Israel’s diplomatic planning.
“I don’t want to enter into a legal debate with the elected mayor of New York,” Sa’ar told the New York Post in an interview from a Manhattan hotel.
Mamdani, a self-identified democratic socialist, vowed during his mayoral campaign to direct the New York City Police Department to carry out the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Sa’ar said the threat would not influence Netanyahu’s travel decisions. “I will only say, or repeat, what the prime minister said himself. He will come to New York,” he said.
Despite the threat, Sa’ar left the door open to having a relationship with Mamdani, who has been an outspoken critic of Israel and an advocate for the Palestinians.
“I hope that we will have, in the future, maybe, a constructive dialogue, even though I can be skeptical about it,” Sa’ar said.
