Massive security operation for NATO summit turns parts of The Hague into a fortress
Locals, art lovers, and diplomats like to meet over a meal and a drink in the historic Gastrobar Berlage behind a landmark art museum in The Hague. But the usual stream of visitors turned into a trickle when fences started rising outside as part of super-tight security around a meeting of NATO leaders that is smothering the Dutch city in a massive military and police operation called Orange Shield.
Parts of the usually laid-back city where NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte used to ride his bicycle to work while munching on an apple when he was prime minister of the Netherlands are turning into a military fortress. 'It's dead,' Berlage owner Bianca Veenhof said as she looked at an almost empty terrace at the start of what should have been Wednesday's lunchtime rush. Parking spots have been blocked off by freshly installed security fencing, workers in nearby offices have been told to stay home, and public transit lines near the grounds have been diverted.
The city that markets itself as the global hub of peace and justice because of the international courts it hosts is turning into a city of security and inconvenience for the June 24–25 meeting that is scheduled to feature leaders of the 32-nation alliance, including US President Donald Trump. The summit comes as global geopolitical tensions soar and conflict escalates in the Middle East.
About half of the Netherlands police force will be on duty in what they are calling the biggest security operation ever staged in the Netherlands. Authorities are locking down parts of the city, closing off roads, and shutting down airspace. Temporary barricades and metal mesh fences surrounding the World Forum summit venue are just a fraction of the measures that radiate out from The Hague.
Some 27,000 police officers–about half of the country's entire force–will be on duty around the summit, along with more than 10,000 defense personnel. Military police will protect delegations. Frigates will patrol the North Sea, F-35 fighter jets and Apache helicopters will take to the skies, and air defense systems will be on alert. Bomb squads will comb the venue for explosives.
Convoys carrying leaders will be whisked with military police escorts along closed-off highways from airports to their accommodations. While civilian drones are banned from the airspace around the summit and other key locations, police and military drones will buzz around the skies over the summit venue and other locations where leaders gather.
Police and riot police also will be on hand for several protests that have already been announced, including an effort by demonstrators to shut down a major highway into the city. Then there are the less visible but no less important measures being taken to provide cybersecurity. The country's top counterterrorism official declined to go into details.
The leaders are scheduled to have dinner with Dutch King Willem-Alexander at his palace in a forest in the city Tuesday night before a meeting the next day where they are expected to agree a new defense spending target. While the leaders are dining with the Dutch royals, foreign and defense ministers from NATO nations will hold meetings at the summit venue to discuss issues including the war in Ukraine.
When the government heads meet Wednesday, they will seek agreement on ramping up military spending as Trump insists Europe must look after its own security while Washington focuses on China and its own borders.
The summit venue is a conference center and theater close to the building that once housed the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, where Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, his military chief Ratko Mladic, and others were convicted of war crimes. The venue also is close to the headquarters of the Nobel Peace Prize–winning Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the European Union's law enforcement and judicial cooperation agencies.
Just down the road is the International Criminal Court, whose chief prosecutor and four judges have been slapped with sanctions by Trump. Closer still is the top United Nations court, the International Court of Justice, whose judges settle disputes between nations.
Many residents near the summit are not sticking around to watch the event unfold. At the end of the week, Berlage will close its doors and sunny terrace for a week, only reopening when the NATO bandwagon has moved on. Veenhof estimates the enforced closure and weeks of plummeting bookings will cost the bistro up to 150,000 euros (173,000) in lost earnings.
Veenhof and her partner, Bauke van Schaik, who is the chef at Berlage, have had enough of the summit already and are fleeing the city for the duration. 'Good friends of ours live in Portugal, so we're going there for a few days,' she said. 'We'll be a bit further away from all the misery and frustration.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Arabiya
3 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
Dutch Soccer Player Quincy Promes Extradited From Dubai To Face Prison In Cocaine Smuggling Case
Dutch soccer player Quincy Promes was extradited Friday from Dubai to the Netherlands, where he faces a prison sentence for involvement in cocaine smuggling, the prosecutor's office told The Associated Press. The Dutch public prosecution service confirmed to the AP that Promes was en route to the Netherlands in Dutch custody. Promes, who scored seven goals in 50 international matches for the Netherlands before legal issues derailed his international career, was convicted last year of complicity in cocaine smuggling and sentenced in his absence to six years in prison. Amsterdam District Court ruled that Promes was involved in the import and export of hundreds of kilograms of cocaine in 2020. His lawyers told judges he denied the allegations. In 2023, Promes was found guilty of stabbing his cousin in the leg and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Both of Promes' convictions are currently under appeal. Promes, a 33-year-old former player for Ajax and Sevilla, had been playing for Spartak Moscow and living in Russia from 2021 until last year, when he was reportedly arrested in Dubai around the time that Spartak was there for friendly games. More recently, he had been playing with United FC, a second-tier club in Dubai.
Al Arabiya
5 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
The success of a key NATO summit is in doubt after Spain rejects a big hike in defense spending
The success of a key NATO summit hung in the balance on Friday after Spain announced that it cannot raise the billions of dollars needed to meet a new defense investment pledge demanded by US President Donald Trump. Trump and his NATO counterparts are meeting for two days in the Netherlands starting next Tuesday. He insists that US allies should commit to spending at least 5 percent of gross domestic product, but that requires investment at an unprecedented scale. Trump has cast doubt over whether the US would defend allies that spend too little. Setting the spending goal would be a historic decision. It would see all 32 countries invest the same amount in defense for the first time. Only last week NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte expressed confidence that they would endorse it. But in a letter to Rutte on Thursday, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez wrote that committing to a 5 percent target would not only be unreasonable but also counterproductive. 'It would move Spain away from optimal spending and it would hinder the (European Union's) ongoing efforts to strengthen its security and defense ecosystem,' Sánchez wrote in the letter seen by The Associated Press. Spain is not entirely alone. Belgium, Canada, France, and Italy would also struggle to hike security spending by billions of dollars, but Spain is the only country to officially announce its intentions, making it hard to row back from such a public decision. Beyond his economic challenges, Sánchez has other problems. He relies on small parties to govern, and corruption scandals have ensnared his inner circle and family members. He's under growing pressure to call an early election. In response to the letter, Rutte's office said only that 'discussions among allies on a new defense investment plan are ongoing.' NATO's top civilian official had been due to table a new proposal on Friday to try to break the deadlock. The US and French envoys had also been due to update reporters about the latest developments ahead of the summit but postponed their briefings. Rutte and many European allies are desperate to resolve the problem by Tuesday so that Trump does not derail the summit as he did during his first term at NATO headquarters in 2018. After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, NATO allies agreed that 2 percent of GDP should be the minimum they spend on their military budgets. But NATO's new plans for defending its own territory against outside attack require investment of at least 3 percent. Spain agreed to those plans in 2023. The 5 percent goal is made up of two parts. The allies would agree to hike pure defense spending to 3.5 percent of GDP. A further 1.5 percent would go to upgrade roads, bridges, ports, and airfields so that armies can better deploy and to prepare societies for future attacks. Mathematically, 3.5 plus 1.5 equals Trump's 5 percent. But a lot is hiding behind the figures, and details of what kinds of things can be included remain cloudy. Countries closest to Russia–Belarus and Ukraine–have all agreed to the target, as well as nearby Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands, which is hosting the June 24–25 summit. The Netherlands estimates that NATO's defense plans would force it to dedicate at least 3.5 percent to core defense spending. That means finding an additional 16 billion to 19 billion euros (18 billion to 22 billion). Supplying arms and ammunition to Ukraine, which Spain does, will also be included as core defense spending. NATO estimates that the US spent around 3.2 percent of GDP on defense last year. The additional 1.5 percent spending basket is murkier. Rutte and many members argue that infrastructure used to deploy armies to the front must be included, as well as building up defense industries and preparing citizens for possible attacks. 'If a tank is not able to cross a bridge. If our societies are not prepared in case war breaks out for a whole of society approach. If we are not able to really develop the defense industrial base, then the 3.5 percent is great, but you cannot really defend yourselves,' Rutte said this month. Spain wanted climate change spending included, but that proposal was rejected. Cyber-security and counter-hybrid warfare investment should also make the cut. Yet with all the conjecture about what might be included, it's difficult to see how Rutte arrived at this 1.5 percent figure. It's not enough to agree to spend more money. Many allies haven't yet hit the 2 percent target, although most will this year, and they had a decade to get there. So an incentive is required. The date of 2032 has been floated as a deadline. That's far shorter than previous NATO targets, but military planners estimate that Russian forces could be capable of launching an attack on an ally within 5–10 years. The US insists that it cannot be an open-ended pledge and that a decade is too long. Still, Italy says it wants 10 years to hit the 5 percent target. Another issue is how fast spending should be ramped up. 'I have a cunning plan for that,' Rutte said. He wants the allies to submit annual plans that lay out how much they intend to increase spending by. For Europe, Russia's war on Ukraine poses an existential threat. A major rise in sabotage, cyberattacks, and GPS jamming incidents is blamed on Moscow. European leaders are girding their citizens for the possibility of more. The United States also insists that China poses a threat. But for European people to back a hike in national defense spending, their governments require acknowledgment that the Kremlin remains NATO's biggest security challenge. The billions required for security will be raised by taxes, going into debt, or shuffling money from other budgets. But it won't be easy for many, as Spain has shown. On top of that, Trump has made things economically tougher by launching a global tariff war–ostensibly for US national security reasons–something America's allies find hard to fathom.
Al Arabiya
6 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
Targeting Iran's Supreme Leader is madness
Last week, the idea resurfaced that Israel may target Iran's Supreme Leader – as if he were just another easy military target in the fierce war between Israel and Iran, which may soon involve the United States. US President Donald Trump made a point of distancing himself from the Israeli plan, announcing that the Iranian Supreme Leader is at the top of Israel's target list and now within their reach. Trump made it clear he opposes Israel's move and does not support it. For all the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app. This issue is far more serious than just another military objective; it could become a matter of ideology and trigger deeply dangerous cycles of revenge. There have been times in history when warring parties refrained from targeting leaders and symbolic figures for reasons beyond direct military calculation. For example, Emperor Hirohito of Japan was a ruler and a sacred symbol. Documents confirm that he authorized his military leaders to go to war, invade Manchuria, and carry out the attack on Pearl Harbor, which led to America's entry into World War II. Yet, during the war, and on the recommendation of General Douglas MacArthur, the US government decided not to target him. He was also excluded from the list of Japanese leaders prosecuted after the American victory and the occupation of Tokyo. That decision paved the way for reconciliation between the US and Japan, and helped the Japanese people accept the Americans. Hirohito remained emperor and respected until his death, living for another 45 years. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is a spiritual leader, and any harm inflicted on him would cause wounds that may never heal – regardless of how decisive the Israeli or American victories are on the battlefield. The Supreme Leader is a lifelong authority, not a president. He would play a vital role in bringing about peace, just as Ayatollah Khomeini did in 1988, when he unilaterally announced an end to the war with Iraq – a war we thought would only end with the complete destruction of one or both countries. We remember that no one in the Iranian regime at that time dared to call for a ceasefire with neighboring Iraq – except the late Supreme Leader. Some people get carried away by the intoxication of war, blinded by overwhelming military power and temporary victories, only to create hatred that could last for decades or even centuries – when they could have achieved victory without doing so. There is no doubt that the Israelis possess superior intelligence capabilities and overwhelming destructive power, which allow them to penetrate deep into Iran and reach its leadership's hideouts, as they have done in Lebanon and Gaza. But Iran's Supreme Leader cannot be equated with Hezbollah's Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated last year. The difference in symbolic weight is enormous, and the consequences of a miscalculation are grave. And even if the comparison isn't entirely accurate, the execution of Saddam Hussein on Eid al-Adha in 2006 – though he was a Baathist and not a religious or tribal leader – came at a heavy price. US generals later attempted to reconcile with Sunni forces, but failed. Washington still suffers the consequences of that event, especially with half the Iraqi population. That grave mistake could have been avoided, and the resulting rift healed, after their military victory. Israelis are capable of stunning military victories, as they achieved in 1967 and again last year – but that doesn't mean they win the larger war. We are truly on the brink of entering a new and critical chapter of history that will reshape what we've known and lived through over the past half century. What's needed now is the use of the threat of force without reaching for its maximum limits—to bring about change through consensus, as much as possible. That would benefit everyone, including Israel, the United States, Iran, and all the nations in the region. Both winners and losers share an interest in reducing tensions and achieving a collective peace.
