Gaza rulers of Hamas on Saturday vowed to arrest and prosecute Fatah members who sneaked out to the West Bank through Israeli-controlled borders.

"Anyone who sneaked out from Gaza illegally and with arrangement with the Israeli occupation would be arrested and sent for trial upon return," Hamas Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Tens of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party members, despite a Hamas ban, succeeded in leaving for the West Bank over the past couple of days to attend Fatah's sixth general conference, due to be held in Bethlehem on Tuesday.

The majority of more than 400 invitees in Gaza was unable to head for Bethlehem as Hamas deployed checkpoints along roads leading to Erez crossing point in northern Gaza Strip.

Some of Fatah activists, including women, disguised in Bedouin and Islamic cloths to avoid the checkpoints or to cross to the Israeli side of the borders via other commercial crossings.

Ihab al-Ghussein, a spokesman for the ministry, said those who have left "had violated the (Hamas) government's decision which bars their travel, so they are outlawed and would be put before court."

Hamas has called on Abbas to free all Hamas activists from his forces' jails in the West Bank and to send blank passport documents to Hamas' administration in Gaza to enable it to issue and renew passports for Gaza's 1.5 million population.

The standoff is the latest in a series of ongoing tension between Hamas and Fatah which rule the Gaza Strip and the West Bank respectively. The political split between the two geographically-separated territories has been in place since Hamas routed Fatah-dominated pro-Abbas forces in Gaza in 2007.

(Xinhua News Agency August 2, 2009)