After weeks of talks and negotiations, the committee presiding over equalizing the military burden, headed by MK Ayelet Shaked, approved criminal sanctions for draft dodgers and other changes to take effect in 2017.

"The middle class is fed up with carrying the ultra-Orthodox population on its back," Finance Minister and Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid said at a Tel Aviv press conference Thursday. He said the new draft law amends a social and historic distortion that has been continuing for 65 years, and that starting in March thousands of young men will receive induction orders.

"In three years, 70 percent of ultra-Orthodox students obligated to enlist in the military will serve in the army or national service," Lapid said.

Criminal sanctions is the main and most controversial clause in the new draft law, which has been the subject of many government debates since the expiration of the Tal Law in 2012.

MK Moti Yogev (Habayit Hayehudi) rejected the decision on criminal sanctions, and his appeal will be discussed next week. Fellow party member Shaked abstained from the vote Wednesday night. Criminal sanctions were approved after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu settled the dispute between Finance Minister Lapid and Habayit Hayehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett.

Another main clause approved Wednesday was mandatory service, essentially obligating every yeshiva student to report for military service, just like secular men. The law states that if enrollment targets are not met, criminal sanctions against draft dodgers (including arrests and imprisonment) will go into effect within a six-month period.

Obligatory army service has been the flagship issue for the Yesh Atid party.

"The principle of mandatory service for all will be a guideline for this new law," said Yaakov Peri, who headed the committee originally in charge of drafting the conscription law. "For the first time since the establishment of the state the sentence for a haredi draft-dodger will be the same as a secular man's, and the obligation to serve will apply also to ultra-Orthodox students. The military and national service, along with students leaving the 'yeshiva prison,' are a bridge to integrating the ultra-Orthodox community in the workforce."

Beginning in July 2017, yeshiva students will be legally obligated to serve in the army. In the interim they will be gradually drafted into military and national service, starting with 3,800 in 2015, 4,500 in 2016, and 5,200 in 2017. According to the proposal, yeshivas will be able to decide which of their students to send to the military, and face sanctions if they do not meet the draft quotas. The bill also gives the defense minister a mandate to defer enrollment until the age of 21, or in some cases 26, and to grant exemptions.

A few clauses that have not yet been decided on are how many ultra-Orthodox men will enroll annually and whether women's military service should be to extended from 24 to 28 months.

"The reality of 65 years will change in a few more votes," Shaked said.

Criticizing the decision, committee member MK Omer Bar-Lev (Labor) said: "I am appalled to see how this coalition of vested interests is navigating this ship without direction."

Once the final bill is approved by the committee (expected next week), it will be sent to the Knesset plenum for second and third readings.

Shaked angered several committee members Wednesday morning when she "stole" a vote on extending the hesder yeshiva service of Modern Orthodox youth from 16 to 17 months by recalling a meeting at 10 a.m. after it had been agreed that the committee would reconvene in the afternoon.

Ultra-Orthodox MKs Ariel Atias (Shas) and Meir Porush (United Torah Judaism) did not attend the hearings or the votes in protest over Habayit Hayehudi's agreement to impose criminal sanctions and failure to insist that financial sanctions would suffice.

The ultra-Orthodox community is planning a mass protest over the planned sanctions. Rabbi Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman, a prominent leader in the haredi world, expressed outrage at the decision, and it appears that next week, for the first time in history, the Council of Torah Sages (the ultimate authority in the Shas party) will meet with Agudat Yisrael and Degel Hatorah.

"The public is furious and we will hold a million-man protest," a United Torah Judaism party official said on Wednesday.

Atias said: "Yair Lapid made a farce out of this law. There were manipulations in the committee and it's best the public doesn't know everything."

The Forum for Draft Equality also responded to the decision: "This is not the committee for equalizing the burden, but the committee for equalizing exemptions."

Meanwhile, a survey by the IDF's Center for Behavioral Studies published in Bamahane, the IDF weekly newspaper, showed that over 70 percent of pre-army youth support equal length military service for men and women. Of the 1,000 17- to 18-year-olds questioned, 70% of women and 73% of men said they "strongly agreed" that the term of military service should be the same for both sexes. Nineteen percent of men and 16% of women said they "agreed somewhat," while 11% of both men and women said they "mostly disagreed."