ERUSALEM - Tamar Raab says she started life as a Democratic voter with a typical teenager's cynicism.
''I sent off my ballot, but I didn't think it counted for anything,'' said Tamar, 18, who moved from Miami to Jerusalem with her parents three years ago. Yet, like other assumptions during these elections, hers proved startlingly wrong.
''This is like a whole lesson in democracy. My vote really meant something,'' she said last night. So did those of eight more of her family members, all living in Israel, all choosing Al Gore.
''We've been watching everything all weekend,'' said Tamar's grandfather, Menachem Raab, 77, a retired rabbi from North Miami Beach, whose three sons, their wives, and other relatives also live in Israel. ''It's really strange that a presidential election should come down to perhaps our votes deciding things.''
Many of about 225,000 Americans living in Israel and the Palestinian territories appear to be as obsessed as Americans back home with the drama in Florida, not just because of its extraordinary nature, but because its outcome could hinge on a relatively tiny number of Sunshine State voters living overseas. And like Tamar's first assumptions about her vote, expectations about the ballots arriving from this corner of the world might be contradicted.
As many as 4,000 Jews from Florida live in Israel, according to David Froehlich, regional chairman for Europe and the Middle East of Democrats Abroad, the party's organization for overseas citizens. ''It's very conceivable that these Florida voters could swing the election,'' says Froehlich.
He estimates that about 80 percent of Americans in Israel have usually voted Democrat. ''This year, it was probably closer to 90 percent, because of Joe Lieberman,'' he said.
No one yet knows how many Floridians in Israel actually voted. Froehlich says he registered about 40,000 Americans in Israel to vote this year, in a major nationwide get-out-the-vote campaign. He estimates that 70 percent of Americans in the country might have mailed in ballots, giving Al Gore perhaps about 2,000 Florida votes from Israel - a figure far higher than estimates in Israeli newspapers Friday, which said perhaps about 200 Floridians in Israel had been eligible to vote.
In the West Bank and Gaza, frustration is high among Palestinians from Florida, some of whom said yesterday that weeks of violent clashes and Israeli travel restrictions made it impossible for them to get or send in absentee ballots.
About 35,000 Palestinian-Americans live in the two territories, according to US Embassy statistics; there is no accurate figure for how many of those are Floridians.
''We haven't received our ballots,'' said registered Florida voter Hanna Quffa, 45, an accountant who runs the Ernst and Young office in Ramallah. Like many Palestinians he knew, he had planned to vote for George W. Bush. ''I think Bush would be much fairer in the Middle East,'' said Quffa, a Gaza native raised in the United States who moved from Perry, Fla., in 1993.
Hazem Quran, who runs the Palestinian-American Society on the West Bank, said he helped to register about 200 American voters in Ramallah. Few had voted, however, he said, because ballots mailed by state officials in the United States had not reached the West Bank. ''I only got my ballot on Thursday,'' said Quran, 45, a dentist from Memphis who was planning to vote for Ralph Nader. ''The border closure meant we also couldn't reach the US Consulate in Jerusalem, about 15 miles from Ramallah.''
Consulate spokeswoman Pat Kabra said consular officials had driven from Jerusalem to Ramallah to deliver applications for absentee ballots to Palestinians, but said it was unclear whether they had been able to mail them back to the United States. Under Florida law, ballots had to be postmarked by Election Day, last Tuesday.
With heavy coverage of the Florida vote on Israeli television and in newspapers, some Floridians have become mini-celebrities in their communities during the past few days. That is even more so for those from Palm Beach County, where a controversial ballot design might have stripped Gore of some votes.
''We came out of synagogue today, and people were pointing to each other and whispering, `They voted in Palm Beach! They voted in Palm Beach!''' said Michael Friedson, 49, who emigrated with his wife, Felice, 39, from Boca Raton in August, and who refused to say which candidate they had picked.
