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Case file

Mahmoud Aloul

Mahmoud al-Aloul is a senior Fatah official who in 2018 was widely discussed as the likely successor to Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian Authority president. Through 2020 the opening said he served as commander of a Fatah militant brigade that kidnapped six Israeli soldiers in 1983, ransomed for incarcerated Palestinians. Today the opening calls it merely "a Fatah brigade that captured eight Israeli soldiers in 1983," and militant appears nowhere in the article. A reader today learns Aloul commanded a Fatah brigade, and not that Wikipedia once called that brigade militant or called the seizure of the soldiers a kidnapping.
Read line by line and written up by hand.
Machine-checked against the full current article on 2026-08-01. “militant” appeared 1 times in this article's opening at its peak. Today it appears nowhere in the article, references included.
We saved snapshots of this article over twenty years; you are reading the 2020 one. Red dashes: removed from Wikipedia since. Pale dots: rewritten; the numbered note shows what it says now. 1 tap a number or a side note to jump between them
The opening as it read in 2020

Mahmoud al-Aloul ( ) (b. 1950 ) was the governor of the Palestinian Authority 's Nablus governorate in the Central Highlands of the West Bank .1 In early 2018, he was widely discussed as the likely successor to Mahmoud Abbas as President of the Palestinian Authority. After the Six-Day War , Aloul was arrested by Israel and sent to live in Jordan, where he joined Fatah . He rose within Fatah, and, in the 1970s, moved to Lebanon. There he served under Khalil al-Wazir , as commander of a Fatah militant brigade that kidnapped six Israeli soldiers in 1983; ransoming them for incarcerated Palestinians in an Israeli–Fatah prisoner exchange .2 According to Aloul, the Palestinians still maintain their belief in armed struggle against the State of Israel . Interview with Mahmoud Al-Aloul, Governor of Nablus Palestinians have not abandoned armed struggle , Jerusalem Post , 10/08/20123

This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 963219775.
Today
“militant” appeared 1 times in this article's opening at its peak. Today it appears nowhere in the article, references included. Read the current article and compare.
201020152020Oct '232025
militant00100
Counts in the opening at each snapshot. Green: the word gained ground. Red: it was cut. Grey: no change.

What Wikipedia says this is

Every article opens by defining its subject. This one was redefined between 2010 and 2025.

Then

governor of the palestinian authority 's nablus governorate in the central highlands of the west bank

Now

palestinian politician who formerly served as the governor of the palestinian authority 's nablus governorate i

Struck red text is no longer in the article; dotted amber text was rewritten. Every revision id links to Wikipedia's copy; the text shown is our own saved copy. Data: /data. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA; quoted for the record; not affiliated with Wikipedia.

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