Eitan, Israel

The Eitan is a wheeled armored personnel carrier developed after Israel decided in 2014 to replace its aging fleet of M113 APCs.[1] The IDF also operates the Namer, a separate armored personnel carrier that was already in service during the Gaza war.[2]

The Nahal infantry brigade of the Israel Defense Forces was the first unit reported to train on the Eitan, beginning in fall 2023 before the Israel-Hamas war.[1] The Eitan was used operationally beginning on October 7, 2023, and in the months that followed.[1] During the 2023–2024 Gaza war, modern Eitan APCs were deployed with the Nahal Brigade in Gaza.[2]

The Eitan was scheduled to receive the Iron Fist active-protection system.[3] Despite vehicle-protection systems, Israeli armored vehicles could still be damaged and soldiers killed by anti-tank guided missiles and rocket-propelled grenades.[3]

On February 4, 2025, the IDF reported employing the Eitan for the first time in northern Samaria during West Bank counterterrorism operations. The operational area included Jenin, Tulkarem, and the villages of Tamoun, Tubas, Tayasir, Far'a, and Aqqaba.[4]

Eitan is a moshav on Israel's Southern Coastal Plain in the Lachish region.[5] Founded in 1955, it is affiliated with Ha-Po'el ha-Mizrachi and represented in the Shafir Regional Council.[5] The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics lists the locality as ETAN (locality code 0037) and confirms 1955 as the year of Jewish settlement.[6]

Population figures for Eitan are not directly comparable across the available records. The Encyclopaedia Judaica recorded 363 inhabitants as of December 31, 2004.[5] A later Israel Central Bureau of Statistics locality list gives a population of 936 at its population reference date.[6] Two government election-data files list population fields of 652 and 434, with 413 registered municipal voters and 203 actual municipal-register voters, respectively.[7][8] The files do not provide sufficiently clear matching dates or definitions to reconcile those figures.

One resident described Eitan as a mixed-generation community where older residents who arrived in the 1950s live alongside younger residents.[9] The same profile described a young couple who bought land for NIS 1.7 million, with construction costs still to be added, and considered the total cheaper than living in central Israel. The couple was renting while planning construction.[9]

Israel Eitan was born in Warsaw in 1885 and died in Pittsburgh on October 11, 1935.[10] He immigrated to the United States in 1921.[10] The biographical entry lists the Séminaire Israélite de France, the Sorbonne, the University of Paris, and Palestine among his educational or institutional affiliations.[10]

Eitan built his career in Pittsburgh, where he served on the faculty of the Hebrew Institute and Duquesne University and worked as a philologist, scholar, teacher, and author.[10] The Concise Dictionary of American Jewish Biography refers readers to the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia and the American Jewish Year Book (vol. 38, p. 426) for further information.[10]