Famed human rights lawyer Amal Clooney was part of the team that helped investigate allegations of war crimes committed by both Hamas and Israel, which has now led to the release of arrest warrants. 

On Monday, prosecutor Karim Khan of the International Criminal Court announced that he was seeking the arrests of Prime Minister Netanyahu, defense minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas officials, including the leader of Hamas at Gaza, Yahya Sinwar. 

Mrs. Clooney penned an opinion piece in the Financial Times with five other lawyers who helped investigate the allegations of war crimes. They say that both the Israeli government and Hamas must answer for the consequences of the war at Gaza.

“We felt compelled to assist when the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, asked us to advise whether there was sufficient evidence to lay charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity,” the group’s statement said. “Today, the prosecutor has taken a historic step to ensure justice for the victims in Israel and Palestine by issuing applications for five arrest warrants alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity by senior Hamas and Israeli leaders.” 

Mrs. Clooney is a professor of law at Columbia Law School and co-founder of the Clooney Foundation for Justice, which she started with her husband, the famed American actor George Clooney. She has been appointed to a number of United Nations commissions, including one investigating the Syrian Civil War. 

Mrs. Clooney and her fellow lawyers argue that the current crisis is “unprecedented” in the level of “fractured discourse” and “antisemitism and Islamophobia.” They also argue that the war “has given rise to misunderstandings about the ICC’s role and jurisdiction.”

“Our common goal is advancing accountability and we have reached our conclusions based on an assessment of the warrant applications against an objective legal standard. We have reached these conclusions unanimously,” the lawyers write. “And we believe it is important to publish them given the extent to which discourse has been politicized, disinformation has been rife and international media has been denied access to the front lines.”

The lawyers, who are known as the Panel of Experts in this context, say they unanimously reached the conclusion that Hamas leaders “have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity for the killing of hundreds of civilians, the taking of at least 245 hostages and acts of sexual violence committed against Israeli hostages.”

They also unanimously reached the conclusion that Messrs. Netanyahu and Gallant have deployed “the war crime of intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare and the murder and persecution of Palestinians as crimes against humanity.”