Officials of the ousted Hamas government have announced that members of Fatah who fled the Gaza Strip to attend the Fatah conference in the West Bank this week will be arrested and tried upon their return. Fatah, the most prominent Palestinian party in the Palestine Liberation Organization, is gearing up for a key conference in Bethlehem on Tuesday, which will include more than 1,500 delegates from the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian diaspora. Gaza-based Fatah members have been bypassing Hamas checkpoints in disguise on their way to the Israeli Erez checkpoint to attend the key gathering. Fatah officials say Israel is being cooperative in organizing permits for the participants, including those from Gaza. Hamas has said it would only allow Fatah members in Gaza to attend the conference if Hamas political prisoners in the West Bank were released and Ramallah provides Hamas with blank passports for Gaza residents. Anyone who snuke out of Gaza, the Hamas Interior Ministry said in a statement, will "be arrested and sent for trial upon return."

Speaking of sneaking across borders, the United Sates is working on securing the release of the three nationals arrested by Iranian authorities after they crossed into Iranian territory from the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. According to a senior official in the Kurdish government, two men and one women "knowingly or unknowingly" crossed the border after hiking in a resort area of Ahmed Awa, southeast of the city of Sulaimaniya. A forth hiker who had intended to join the group on their trek was forced to stay in Sulaimaniya due to illness. He is now counting his blessings in the care of American embassy officials in Baghdad. While hiking in the relatively safe Kurdish region is quite common among Western tourists, most do so with a local guide. Kurdish officials identified the Americans as Shaun Gabriel Maxwell, Shane Bower, Sara Short and Joshua Steel.

While he will not be hiking up mountains, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is today set to pay his first visit to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region since assuming office in 2006. Malikiwill hold talks with Massud Barzani, recently reelected as president of the region, and with Iraqi President Jalal Talibani, who is Kurdish. Barzani heads the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Talibani the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, two parties that have dominated Kurdish politics for the last two decades and together won 57 percent of the vote in the recent regional parliamentarian elections. The discussions between the leaders will focus on strained relations between the Kurdish region and the central Iraqi government in Baghdad. Recent spats have centered on control over the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk and the oil fields that lie underneath its surrounding countryside. Development of the oil fields has slowed pending a settlement on who will control the oil and the income it will generate.

Meanwhile, away from mountain hikes and discussions of oil profits, a much more public drama was unfolding in nearby Tehran as, in a spectacle unlikely to calm tensions following the disputed June elections, Iran began the trail of more than 100 protesters and oppositions figures Saturday. Oppositions figures were accused in the indictment of inciting riots following the elections, conspiring to overthrow the government and threatening national security. Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the leader of the opposition, denied yesterday that the protest movement had been violent or foreign-backed. "Our nation is fully aware of the need to maintain our sovereignty," he said. "In spite of allegations, the justice-seeking and sacred movement has no links whatsoever to foreign elements and is completely domestic." The defendants, wearing prison uniforms and some of them shackled, included a former vice president, a Newsweek reporter and various spokespeople for the reform movement. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is set to be sworn in for a second term later this week.