Two militant Palestinian factions have called for a "collective leadership" that would include Islamist factions to fill any vacuum left by Yasser Arafat.
"There are Islamist factions outside the framework of the Palestine Liberation Organisation so we are calling for a collective and unified leadership that would include everyone: Islamic and national forces," said Maher Taher, a politburo member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
"The developments stress the national necessity for this," said Taher, whose movement is part of PLO.
Muslim militant group Hamas said a collective leadership was now a "must".
"We believe it is important and we are concerned with taking part in it," Osama Hamdan, Hamas representative in Lebanon, told Reuters. "What is going on today on the internal front, Arafat 's sickness, and regarding the international developments, we think this has become a must."
Arafat 's slide into illness has raised fears of chaos among Palestinians locked in a four-year-old uprising, and the death of a leader Israel and Washington see as an obstacle to peace could shuffle the cards in the Middle East conflict.
In the West Bank, an official said some of the Palestinian president's powers were handed over to his prime minister.
Arafat , loved by most Palestinians and reviled by most Israelis, has named no successor since emerging from exile under interim peace accords with Israel in the early 1990s.
Hamdan said Hamas, which is not in the PLO, would take part in a collective leadership.
"What is needed now is rearranging the internal Palestinian situation so that Palestinians can face any developments that might happen during the current health situation of Abu Ammar ( Arafat )," Hamdan said.