Israel appoints its first female ambassador to Egypt
Amira Oron, who heads Foreign Ministry’s Middle East Economic Relations Department, will take up the position next summer
The Foreign Ministry on Tuesday announced that Amira Oron has been selected to serve as Israel’s ambassador to Egypt, the first woman to hold the position.
Oron, a senior member of the ministry, has previously served in Cairo and Ankara, and headed the Foreign Ministry’s Egypt division. She currently heads the ministry’s Middle East Economic Relations Department.
If the government approves her appointment, she will replace the current ambassador to Egypt, David Govrin, next summer.
In 2017, Govrin and his staff returned to Israel for eight months due to unspecified security threats. Upon their return to Egypt, they resumed work from the envoy’s suburban Cairo home.
On September 9, 2011, several thousand protesters forcibly entered the Israeli embassy in Giza, Cairo, after breaking down a perimeter wall to the compound.
The protests began in response to the inadvertent killing of five Egyptian security guards by IDF soldiers during an attempt to catch terrorists who had ambushed and killed eight Israelis along the Israel-Egypt border.
Following the intervention of the White House, Egypt sent commando forces into the embassy complex to rescue the Israeli staff. The attack prompted nearly the entire embassy staff to evacuate in one of the worst crises to hit the two countries’ relations.
Egypt was the first Arab country to make peace with Israel, in 1979, but relations have always been frosty due to popular Egyptian support for Palestinians.
In recent years the two countries have enjoyed closer intelligence and security ties over their shared enmity toward Islamist terror groups and other common regional concerns.
Egypt is playing a key role in attempts to bring an end to hostilities between Israel and Hamas, as well as Palestinian reconciliation talks.
