"The number of Russian visitors to Israel could exceed 250,000 people annually in the next three years," said Vladimir Slutsker, a member of the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia's parliament.
Russia and Israel announced late last year that a feasibility study for a project to cancel visas had been concluded, and the two countries launched domestic procedures for drafting a corresponding agreement.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, currently on an official visit to Moscow, told a meeting with Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov earlier on Thursday that coordination of the agreement was currently being concluded.
Slutsker said that of more than 2 million tourists who visited Israel in 2007, half a million were U.S. nationals followed by 250,000 French visitors. Russian tourists held third place with more than 100,000 people.
He said visa-free travel between the two countries would be both economically useful and historically natural. He said immigrants from Russia and other former Soviet republics accounted for over 1 million of Israel's 7 million citizens. Visits to friends and relatives would probably rise dramatically if visas were lifted, he said.
