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The caption on this photo reads - "Eyal Himelstein and Nissim Ben-Hemo on the light tank prototype". T here's a lot of misinformation on this subject on the internet,  a s far as I've seen the photo traces to one book. There is little information on the tank itself in the book. I've translated the text in the hope that people could gather the facts for themselves instead of being confused by bad machine translations or the broken PDF file. The entry is by Nissim Ben-Hemo in a book in memorial of Colonel Yehiam Harpaz, one of the leading officers in the Merkava development program and often called "Mr. Suspension". He was the inventor of the Mark 3 suspension. The entry is focused on his role in the light tank project :      " The development and assembly of a prototype for a light tank were carried out in parallel with the development of the Merkava Mark 4. The technical branches were very busy with the many new assemblies that were introduced with...

  Merkava Mark 1 - Israel (1979-2014)  Main Battle Tank - 250 built Introduction The Merkava Mark 1 was the first version of the Israeli Merkava main battle tank (MBT) to enter service with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). It was first introduced in 1979, serving in the regular army until 2009 and in the reserves until 2014. Around 154 of these tanks first saw part in military action during Operation “Peace for Galilee” in 1982. Naming The name Merkava (Hebrew: מרכבה ) translates as ‘Chariot’. It comes from the codename given to the tank’s development program in the Israeli Ministry of Defense. It follows the local tradition of giving tanks names of ancient weapons. This began with the Centurion, known as the ‘Sho’t’ (Hebrew: שוט ), meaning ‘Whip’. Over the years, as happened with other IDF vehicles, urban legends about the meaning or reasoning behind the name ‘Merkava’ have appeared and proliferated, with references to The tank’s design, with its engine at the front, is lik...