Amal Clooney Reviewed Evidence of War Crimes in Gaza

Human-rights lawyer Amal Clooney said on Monday that she was part of a panel that reviewed an investigation by the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor on whether to bring charges of war crimes against senior Hamas and Israeli leaders. The panel concluded unanimously that there were grounds to pursue the charges, leading prosecutor Karim Khan to seek arrest warrants for senior Hamas and Israeli officials, including Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defense minister Yoav Gallant.

The eight-person panel, which published its findings on Monday, was convened in January at Khan’s request. Clooney and her colleagues, all of whom are experts on international law, were asked to evaluate whether his warrant applications against Netanyahu and Gallant, as well as Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, and Mohammed Deif, met the court’s standard. Specifically, the panel’s goal was to determine whether there were “reasonable grounds to believe” the Hamas and Israeli officials had committed crimes that fall within the ICC’s jurisdiction — including genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity — in Palestine since June 2014.

In an accompanying op-ed published in the Financial Times, the panel said there are reasonable grounds to believe that the three Hamas officials have committed war crimes including “hostage-taking, murder, and crimes of sexual violence” and that Netanyahu and Gallant have also committed crimes against humanity including “starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution, and extermination.” Khan’s warrant applications will now be considered by a panel of ICC judges.

Clooney, who has represented victims of mass atrocities — including those from Armenia, Darfur, Iraq, Myanmar, and Syria — had previously been criticized for not speaking out publicly about the war in Gaza. In a statement, she said she joined the panel because she believes in protecting civilian lives.

“The law that protects civilians in war was developed more than 100 years ago, and it applies in every country in the world regardless of the reasons for a conflict,” she said. “As a human-rights lawyer, I will never accept that one child’s life has less value than another’s. I do not accept that any conflict should be beyond the reach of the law, nor that any perpetrator should be above the law.”

She concluded, “I hope justice will prevail in a region that has already suffered too much.”