The announcement that Israel's UK ambassador Daniel Taub is returning to Jerusalem signals the end of a four-year posting in which he oversaw rapid economic growth between Israel and Britain, but also the fallout from last year's Gaza conflict.

Mr Taub is due to leave the job at the end of the summer - the precise date has yet to be confirmed, and there is no word either on his successor.

An embassy spokesman confirmed that Mr Taub would be taking up a role dealing with Israel's international legal challenges - at the International Criminal Court and at the United Nations, and opposing the boycott movement.

Mr Taub - who grew up in Finchley and is the second native-born Briton to serve as ambassador here - said: "It has been an extraordinary privilege to represent Israel here in the UK and to help deepen the friendship and co-operation between the two countries in so many fields.

"We will head back to Israel confident that these relations, like the wonderful warm friendships we have enjoyed here, will not end when we leave but will last and thrive for many years to come."

Like his British counterpart Matthew Gould - who leaves Tel Aviv this week - Mr Taub presided over a period of substantial trade growth and improvements in academic and technological partnerships between the two countries. On the political front, both David Cameron and then-Labour leader Ed Miliband visited Israel last year.

But the busiest period of his ambassadorship came last summer, when he spent 50 days touring television studios and speaking to journalists about the violence in Gaza.

He also made a high-profile visit to Bradford last August, after then-MP George Galloway declared the city an "Israeli-free zone".

Mr Taub's appointment in 2011 was met with some opposition in Jerusalem - he had not previously run an embassy but had worked as head of Israel's negotiating team at the Culture of Peace talks with the Palestinians in the 1990s.

He also had a successful spell in television, as the writer of a popular drama series about Orthodox Jews.

A graduate of Oxford and Harvard, Mr Taub used his time in Britain to address what he saw as a handful of key areas: academia, business, politics, religion, local Jewish communities, and the media. He regularly visited universities, speaking to international politics students despite the objections of anti-Israel activists on campuses almost everywhere he went.

He bemoaned what he described as the distance between the Jewish community in Britain and Israelis living in this country. "We have very few points of contact," he said.