CAIRO, Jul 17 (Aswat Masriya) – Israel’s new ambassador to Egypt has arrived in Cairo on Sunday to take up his post, after his predecessor had asked to return to Egypt only two years into his posting.

Haim Koren had “asked to step down after only two years, citing personal reasons, mostly due to the difficult service conditions in Cairo, caused by the security situation,” the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported in February.

The newly appointed ambassador David Govrin arrived in Cairo early on Sunday to begin his diplomatic mission, after the Israeli cabinet approved his appointment in April.

Govrin, a professor of Middle East history, has served in a series of positions throughout the Middle East, including at the Cairo embassy in the 1990s. He was most recently the head of the Jordan desk at the Israeli foreign ministry.

Govrin's arrival in Cairo comes around a week after Egypt's foreign minister Sameh Shoukry's rare visit to Israel, where he met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pushed for renewed peace talks between Israel and Palestine.

In March, controversial TV anchor Tawfik Okasha was expelled from Egypt's House of Representatives after receiving then-Israeli ambassador Haim Koren for dinner at his house, where they reportedly discussed Ethiopia's Grand Renaissance Dam and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Okasha was expelled after a majority of House members, 465 out of 596, voted in favour of removing him.

The Israeli Embassy in Cairo has reopened in September 2015, after being closed for four years. The Tel Aviv mission in Egypt closed its doors in September 2011, when a group of Egyptian protesters stormed into the embassy’s Giza building, as thousands demonstrated against Israel's killing of five Egyptian soldiers in Sinai.