Last update - 00:00 17/09/2007
Israel cancels tourist visa requirement for Russians
The cabinet voted yesterday to cancel the visa requirement for tourists arriving in Israel from Russia. Only ministers from Shas voted against Tourism Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch's proposal.
The move will only take effect if the Russians reciprocate by canceling the visa requirement for Israelis, a subject the Foreign Ministry is now handling.
According to Aharonovitch, about four million Russian tourists visit the Middle East every year, but only 100,000 of them visit Israel. This, he claims, is due to the visa requirement, which other countries in the region do have.
Aharonovitch expects hundreds of thousands more Russian tourists to come here once the visa requirement is changed, and he predicts that the new tourists will spend hundreds of millions of shekels and create thousands of new jobs in the local tourism industry every year.