Ryanair has announced its first Israeli flights, with three new routes to Eilat Ovda Airport from Budapest in Hungary, Kaunas in Lithuania and Krakow in Poland.
The new routes will start in November and Israel will be the airline's 31st market.
The airline said it continues to talk with the Israeli authorities over future routes to the country.
Ryanair said the Red Sea resort city of Eilat has potential to compete for Europeans looking for an alternative to the Canary Islands.
The airline's entry into Israel follows the country two years ago signing an open skies agreement with the European Union as the state encouraged more low-cost carriers to fly to Israel.
A host of such airlines have started flying to Israel, including Norwegian, Wizz Air and EasyJet, while Israeli flag carrier El Al last year launched its own "UP" low-cost brand to some European cities.
David O'Brien, Ryanair's chief commercial officer, said the average winter temperature in Gran Canaria and Eilat were similar but that 10 million tourists a year spend $5 billion in Gran Canaria compared with 1.5 million tourists spending $700m in Eilat.
At present, few carriers fly direct to Eilat. Those wishing to holiday there typically fly to Tel Aviv and connect to small Israeli carriers Arkia or Israir.
O'Brien said Ryanair would like to fly to Tel Aviv but there was no urgency as Ben-Gurion International Airport is expensive. Still, it was working on flights between Tel Aviv and Cyprus.
"We will grow to 160 million passengers by 2024 - 60 million more than now and we hope a significant amount will be here."
At 1.5 million people, Tel Aviv has a larger population than Copenhagen or Dublin but far fewer airport passengers, he noted.
