The popular demand for ultra-Orthodox men to be drafted has built up since Israel’s Supreme Court invalidated a law that allowed wholesale army exemptions for yeshiva students, ruling in 2012 that it contradicted the principle of equality. Many Israelis have been pressing for a more equal sharing of the burdens of citizenship.

The ultra-Orthodox sector constitutes up to 10 percent of Israel’s population of eight million but is rapidly increasing because its members favor large families. Many Haredi men well past draft age opt to stay in religious seminaries, preferring study to work and living on welfare payments.

Last month a government committee proposed a law establishing annual quotas for the drafting of yeshiva students for military or national service and calling for criminal sanctions against those who evade the draft if the quotas are not met by mid-2017. The bill stops far short of enforcing conscription for all Haredi young men, instead proposing a gradual increase in recruitment levels. Each year 1,800 outstanding students will be granted full exemptions. Thousands of yeshiva students beyond draft age will immediately be allowed to enter the work force.

The Israeli Parliament is expected to pass the bill into law later this month.

Yair Lapid, the leader of the centrist Yesh Atid party, and Naftali Bennett of the right-wing Jewish Home party, who championed the ultra-Orthodox draft in their election campaigns, have already declared victory.

“Since approximately 30 percent of first graders are Haredi, Israel will not survive as a country unless Haredim are incorporated into our economy and service,” Mr. Bennett wrote on his Facebook page this weekend, adding: “Everyone, including those who are shouting, because they are expected to shout, knows that not one person studying Torah will be sent to jail. Period. The law is balanced, gradual and good for all Israelis and for the Haredim in particular.”

But critics of the proposed law say it will do little to equalize the burden and may even do harm.

“Sharing the burden is just good copywriting,” said Rabbi Aaron Shushan, a teacher from Telz Stone, a Haredi community near Jerusalem, noting that many Israeli women do not serve in the army on religious grounds and that members of Israel’s Arab minority are exempted from service.

Yedidia Z. Stern, a law professor and vice president of research at the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent research organization, wrote in the newspaper Yediot Aharonot on Sunday: “The experts on the Haredi sector — from its toughest critics to its sworn supporters — agree that the bill that is being prepared is a double failure: From a practical standpoint it is not effective, and from the symbolic aspect, it is offensive and drags us into a dispute between brothers. It’s hard to imagine a worse outcome.”