Posting this here since I'm not sure where else to post; I'm new to FT. We are planning a holiday in Italy this spring, and I spotted what I think is a great fare tonight. Alitalia BOS>FCO for $995. I really wanted to make a quick trip to Tel Aviv to visit someone, so I called Alitalia and I could do BOS>FCO>TLV>BOS for $1400 or so.
But then I saw there are some really cheap fares from Italy to Israel (like on easyJet out of Milan which would be fine) AND I found a BOS to TLV flight for even less than the $995. I assume the days are long gone when you can skip a leg of a 1-stop flight, huh? Because in theory I could hop off in Rome, get to TLV and then take my return TLV>BOS. But no.

Any suggestions on how to save some $ on this itinerary? Thanks.

Welcome to FT Andrea!

No, you can't skip a leg of a multi-stop flight (unless you don't plan on taking any subsequent flights). The cheapest way to do this is really just to play around with some different combinations. It may very well be that BOS-FCO-BOS plus a separate set of flights to TLV is cheaper than combining them. Alternatively you could use a search engine like kayak.com or matrix.itasoftware.com to build your trip from scratch.

and if you ever did skip one leg of a multi-hop routing like this, all the subsequent reservations will be cancelled. I think all airlines do this automatically.

Did you try pricing open jaw? BOS-FCO, TLV-BOS? Then book your easyjet to go Milan-TLV.

I don't know why I didn't search open-jaw, I'm a huge fan. It was pretty late at night. Yes, that could work really well. Flying out of Milan is even easier than heading back south to FCO. A fare of $108 comes up on Meridiana, which I don't know but looks fine.
I am using Kayak, I've had good results from them lately. Thanks!