I have a hobby of building modern era tanks of all sorts, the Merkava is actually better than the M1 Abrams in several respects in regards to urban warfare, it has a rear hatch for egress for a squad of soldiers and its armour is actually quite good. The Abrahms is a blitzkrieg assault type of tank, it was meant to go head to head with the very best of the Russian tanks and shoot on the run of which it has no equal.
The Merkava unfortunately is a victim of technology that the Hezbolla is being given to from Iran and further on from Russia. We probably have been working with Israel for applied anti-missile armour packs for the Merkava, these are basically explosive directional packs bolted to the sides, front and rear to counter explode upon impact with an incoming missile. I would think right now the IDF is considering using depleted uranium armour that is being used on the Abrahms.
I fondly remember reading a scifi book series called BOLOS, makes me wonder if actually the future of tank warfare will be a self aware thinking tank.
The one I remember is this:
Apparently there are / were other novels, I haven't read them yet :-(
...although I still prefer Retief of the CDT.
Cheers!