( This is part II of a two-part feature. )

MOST Israelis like their government.

They like it because they feel it is important for a country in Israel's situation to be unified, or at least to seem unified from abroad. So even if they don't like their government's policy, they are reluctant to say so.

They accept it because there's really very little they can do about changing it. The party leaders control the selection of candidates and thus control the policy-making. With the current election procedure and the party coalitions, the average Israeli really has very little effect on what his country is doing.

Also, the coalition government is doing something for everybody. It says that it does not intend to keep all the occupied/liberated territory, but it arranges for Israeli housing developments in these lands. It overturns a court decision with implications opposed by the religious elements in the country and then proposes a law effecting the original decision without the "dangerous" implications. Looking at the government's record, nearly every Israeli can find something to his liking.

Certainly it is difficult for a coalition government like Israel's to formulate precise policy without destroying the coalition. Many Israelis criticize the government for placing national unity above national policy, and some have even charged that Israel lost the chance to make a quick peace after the Six Day War because the unity government could make no decisions.

But this criticism is seldom displayed as outright opposition to the government. Disapproval of or disappointment with government policy has not been overwhelmingly vocal since the 67 war and has never been effectively organized.

When I was in Israel in January, I decided to seek out some people who did not like their government's foreign policy and who opposed it from the left. I suspected that such people might exist, since many Israelis in the U.S. are unhappy with their government's policy, and I had heard speeches and read articles by several outspoken Israelis who felt that their government was not working in the best interests of their country or of peace.

Finding them in Israel was not as simple as I expected. I asked some of my friends in the Israeli army, and they thought I was kidding. They knew of a few "deviants" who wrote articles against the government's international policy, but this was isolated, they said.

My first success came at a dinner with students from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I told our host what I was looking for. "Here I am," he said. "And here are some more," he added, pointing to his friends, so we started to talk.

It is difficult to generalize about the dissenters. All of them have been soldiers, and they are proudly patriotic. They are few, and they know it. They are the intellectual elite among a people where education has always been highly valued, and many of them are academics.

Outside the university they are found in the self-styled New Left, composed of young, cosmopolitan, and moderately angry intellectual-and artist-types (who also seem to be the only Israelis who use drugs.

The discontent seems to be centered in Jerusalem. The university there is the largest and the most prestigious in Israel with the greatest emphasis on liberal arts. This is the most self-consciously intellectual and international atmosphere in Israel, and it seems to foster a more reasoned and a slightly more cynical nationalism (although one still deeply grounded in concern for country) which makes such disagreement possible and unavoidable.

They are mostly young, and they are alienated from the early pioneer and Zionist ideals which current Israeli leaders formulated 50 or more years ago and still represent. In fact, they differ politically from the old-time Zionist leaders still in control of the government, as well as from the newly-arrived Moroccan immigrants.

This left is not really organized. Under the present governmental structure, organization probably wouldn't do them any good, since there is no room on the political scene for an opposition party. But its "members" have several things in common.