A good article on this issue from Cross-Currents:
The Coalition Plan For Charedim
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on March 20th, 2013
This did not happen. Like the plan or not, it does show some serious thought and consideration.
An exception, apparently, is that even immediately, anyone over the age of 22 is free to enter the workforce, even if he did not do any army service. We can anticipate that many will take advantage of this offer, and begin the slow process of having Israeli charedim accept what many, if not enough of us, do in the States: that there is room for both learners and earners.
The school issue is more ticklish from the standpoint of the extremely anti-secular community in Israel. The government is demanding two and a half hours a day of core curriculum instruction. Schools which do not provide it will now be denied funds. Again, this becomes a funding crisis rather than grounds for a holy war against the nouveau-Czarist agents set to padlock the doors of the chadorim.
Again, it could have been handled more stupidly.
Many in the States (depending on where they daven) will be hard-pressed to find these measures as objectionable as people in Israel. Many undoubtedly will join the mourning, but others will daven that these measures will be successful in solving the growing problem of poverty and the burden that the charedi community is perceived to place on unwilling Israelis. Many will look expectantly to the building of a society in which the Torah community is seen as having the best and most attractive approach to living a meaningful life, attentive to all normal human needs.
Another danger is more insidious. The choosing of the 1800 yearly exemptions may go the same way as the reaction to the hated Cantonist draft of the Czars. Some rabbonim at the time excelled in their fairness in guarding the vulnerable, like the orphan children who were targets for the khappers (kidnappers paid off by the wealthy to secure replacements for their own children to escape the draft.) Others were not effective. If Roshei Yeshiva protect their own children and sons-in-law from service, or if there is significant infighting and no objective standard in choosing the 1800 elite on the basis of merit, it will bring down the charedi world faster than any universal draft could.
We all need much siyata deShamaya in charting our reactions in the next weeks and the course in the upcoming four years.