Israel delays staff’s return to Cairo embassy amid security concerns: source

The staff to Israel’s embassy in Cairo has been ordered to stay at home because of security fears, the Shin Bet security service said Tuesday.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry has declined to comment, but Israel’s Channel 2 television said that for three months, ambassador David Govrin and his staff have been working from Jerusalem.

“Due to security considerations, the return of the Foreign Ministry’s embassy team to Cairo has been curbed,” the Shin Bet said in a brief statement.

Israel reopened its embassy in Egypt in 2015, four years after it was stormed by dozens of protesters in violence that led to the evacuation of the ambassador.

The ambassador then, Yitzhak Levanon, and other staff were airlifted from Egypt after demonstrators attacked the city centre embassy in September 2012, in a protest over the shooting of five Egyptian security guards by Israeli soldiers pursuing militants who had ambushed and killed eight Israelis along the border.

Source: Ahram online.