Israel will open a new embassy in New Zealand next month amid signs of warming relations between Wellington and Jerusalem.
A spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Canberra, Australia — which has looked after diplomatic affairs in New Zealand since 2002 — confirmed that Shemi Tzur, 64, a former envoy to Finland, Cyprus and Estonia, is expected to take up the post of ambassador to New Zealand in April.
The Israeli mission in Wellington was closed in 2002 amid cost-cutting measures by Israel’s Foreign Ministry. In 2004, relations between Israel and New Zealand cooled after two alleged Mossad agents were caught and jailed for trying to illegally obtain a New Zealand passport. As a result, New Zealand suspended high-level diplomatic relations for more than a year until Israel apologized in 2005.
Bilateral relations have since thawed, helped in part by the defeat of Helen Clark and her Labor Party in 2008. She was succeeded by Conservative leader John Key, the son of a Jewish refugee from Austria who has family in Israel. — jta