In 1969 he was appointed head of infantry forces and later served as a division commander. As a division commander, of 36th Ugda, Brigadier General Eitan stopped the Syrian attack into the Golan Heights during the October 1973 Yom Kippur War. After the war, he was appointed to commander of the northern command and promoted to the rank of Major General. Chief of Staff On 1 April 1978, Eitan was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General and was appointed by Ezer Weizman to be the Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces. Eitan opened his term with symbolic steps to increase discipline and efficiency in the IDF. He required soldiers to wear the military beret and to collect spent cartridges after rifle range practice. Eitan oversaw the redeployment of the IDF outside of the Sinai Peninsula after the peninsula was handed back to Egypt. He and Sharon demolished the Israeli settlement Yamit in Sinai in April 1982 after the Egyptians refused to pay for its infrastructure. As chief of staff, Eitan initiated a project that was known as "Raful Youth" (Na'arei Raful), in which young persons from low socio-economic background were integrated into the IDF and were trained for professions that allowed them to come out of poverty and avoid getting involved in crime. The IDF also helped those youth to complete their high school studies. He was chief of staff at the time of the Israeli air attack on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor complex on 7 June 1981. In April 1982 he initiated a new policy in the Occupied Territories which in Israeli army slang became known by the Hebrew word tertur. One document from his office stated: After the trial of seven members of the Israeli army in December 1982, an Israeli operations officer was quoted as described tertur: "In addition to this business where you work to discover the provocateurs, you tertur the population. Population tertur does not mean that you punish those who did something, but you simply round up everyone, just like that." Lebanon War In 1981 it became public knowledge the Israel was arming and forming an alliance with the Lebanese Phalangist militia. In May it was revealed that Eitan had recently visited Jounieh several times and met with the militia leadership. The previous month, at a meeting in Damascus, the Lebanese government had come to an agreement with UNIFIL to deploy