Since the 1990s, Israel has gone through a significant academic educational expansion. However, the part of the Israeli citizen Palestinian Arab population in this expansion was delayed until the last decade. The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of the delayed participation of the Arab population in academic educational expansion. Using age-period-cohort models and labor force surveys from 1995 until 2021, I present the trends in the increasing participation of Palestinian Arabs and Jews in academic education. The results suggest that the primary cause of this increase was a change in gender norms that enabled Palestinian Arab women to engage more fully in educational pursuits. The differences among the Arab population (Muslims, Druze, and Christians) are also discussed.