Amal Clooney plays key role in Netanyahu, Hamas leader's arrest warrants

Amal Clooney, celebrated human rights lawyer and wife of actor George Clooney, was earlier slammed for not speaking up on the Palestine issue. Now, she has been praised for her role in the arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

Amal Clooney was a part of the group of experts who counselled the International Criminal Court on the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Sinwar.

"I agreed and joined a panel of international legal experts to undertake this task," Amal Clooney said in a lengthy statement on the Clooney Foundation for Justice website.

Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), announced on Monday that he was seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Sinwar for their actions during the seven-month conflict between Israel and Hamas.

"A timely reminder that performative activity on social media is not "action". Amal Clooney has been dragged continuously for the past few months for supposedly being silent on Gaza. She was diligently doing her actual job and making a tangible difference in the real world," said Abimola Johnson, a London-based barrister, on X.

The ICC's chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, told CNN the warrants mention war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Sinwar's charges are connected to the October 7 attacks on southern Israel, while Netanyahu's arrest is sought due to his attacks on Gaza.

This is the first time a friend of the US has been targeted.

In a statement released right after the news, Khan said he was "grateful for the advice" offered to him by a panel of experts, which involved Amal Clooney.

Clooney is a world-famous human rights lawyer who has worked on many global cruises. She married the actor George Clooney in 2014.

Amal "represented victims of ISIS in the only three trials in the world in which ISIS members have been convicted of genocide and in five other trials convicting ISIS members of war crimes and crimes against humanity", said her special adviser profile on the ICC website.

Israel and Hamas have been fighting a war that has killed 1,200 Israeli people on October 7 and 35,000 Palestinians since, as the war has continued since the October 7 attacks.

The US has been a good friend of Israel, but now the White House has become more and more critical of Israel's continuous attacks on Gaza. Israel is facing pressure from the international community.

CNN also reported how warrants have also been issued for Israel's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, along with two Hamas leaders: Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, better known as Mohammed Deif, who leads the Al-Qassam Brigades, and Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas' political leader.

Sinwar and other Hamas leaders are charged with "extermination, murder, taking of hostages, rape and sexual assault in detention."

Netanyahu and Gallant have been charged with "causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, deliberately targeting civilians in conflict."

In a statement by Financial Times, the panel of experts said how the Israel-Hamas war, "tested the system of international law to its limits".

"For months, we have engaged in an extensive process of review and analysis," they mentioned. "We have carefully examined each of the applications for arrest warrants, as well as underlying material produced by the prosecution team in support of the applications."

They further revealed how they are sure that war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed.

"There is no conflict that should be excluded from the reach of the law; no child's life is valued less than another's. The law we apply is humanity's law, not the law of any given side. It must protect all the victims of this conflict, and all civilians in conflicts to come", the group noted.

Netanyahu has termed the ICC's decision as "what the new antisemitism looks like".

"It is directed against the IDF soldiers, who are fighting with extraordinary heroism against the vile Hamas murderers who attacked us with terrible cruelty on Oct. 7," Netanyahu said. "What a travesty of justice! What a disgrace!" he added.