Israel has named its first envoy to New Zealand since its Wellington embassy was closed in 2002.
Shemi Tzur, a former ambassador to Cyprus, Finland and Estonia, was expected to take up the post next year, Israeli news agency, the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA), reported.
Israel's embassy in Wellington was previously closed as part of global cost-cutting measures.
Since Ambassador Ruth Kahanov departed New Zealand in 2002, Israel's ambassador to Australia, headquartered in Canberra, has served as non-resident ambassador to New Zealand.
Relations between Israel and New Zealand chilled after two reported Mossad agents, Eli Cara, 50, and Uriel Kelman, 31, were caught and jailed for trying to illegally obtain New Zealand passports in 2004.
A third suspected Mossad agent was a former Israeli diplomat based in Europe, Zev William Barkan, 37, who stole the identity of a tetraplegic Aucklander to fraudulently obtain his passport.
NZ police also sought a fourth person, in New Zealand.
Barkan worked as a diplomat in both Austria and Belgium.
Then Prime Minister Helen Clark said there was no doubt the men were Mossad operatives and suspended high-level diplomatic relations for more than a year until Israel apologised in 2005.
The JTA reported bilateral relations had since thawed, "helped in part by the defeat of Helen Clark and her largely hostile Labour Party at the 2008 polls".
The new Prime Minister, John Key, was the son of a Jewish refugee from Austria who had family living in Israel, it said.
Tzur, 64, was involved in a Middle East peace conference in Madrid in 1991.
He is also a former diplomat in South Africa, Turkey, Australia, Fiji and Uzbekistan.
Tzur's appointment must be approved by the NZ government.
NZPA