Introduction

In Israel, the most prominent ethnic split is between Palestinian Arab Israeli citizens (hereafter: Palestinian Arabs) and Israeli Jews (hereafter: Jews). Palestinian Arabs, who comprise around 20% of the population, are primarily Muslim (80%), with the remainder comprised of Christian, Druze, and other small minority groups. Socially and residentially, Palestinian Arabs and Jews are highly segregated, with only seven cities defined as "mixed communities".Footnote 1 Before the establishment of the state of Israel, Palestinian Arabs made up the majority of the population in Palestine. However, with Jewish immigration and the War of Independence in 1948, Arabs became a subordinate minority in social, economic, political, and cultural status.

As a result, the society in Israel became stratified along national lines in almost every aspect. It is defined by spatial and occupational segregation, education and income gaps, and differences in political influence. Overall, Palestinian Arabs are characterized by lower socioeconomic status than Jews in every aspect of stratification and economic outcomes. However, meaningful differences also exist within the Arab population. Muslims and Druze are typically characterized by low socioeconomic status residing in rural villages, while Christians historically tended to reside in urban areas and have higher education, occupational status, and earnings. Druze are unique, as they experience the same socioeconomic disadvantages as Muslims, yet receive privileges from the state like those of Jews due to their military service. (Bar-Haim and Semyonov, 2015).

In the 1990s, Israel experienced a marked expansion of its tertiary education system (Bar-Haim et al. 2013). This expansion was primarily driven by economic and technological factors, such as increased market demand for educated workers and employers’ increased demand for complex skills. This included the rapid increase in second-tier colleges and the academization of post-secondary teacher training colleges. This expansion increased access to higher education for peripheral residents and provided opportunities for Palestinian Arabs, especially those who lacked the requisite background for entrance into prestigious university fields to gain academic education, albeit in less prestigious institutions (Agbaria and Pinson, 2013).

In addition, the geopolitical developments of this era, including the fall of the former USSR and the peace process, further opened the gates of international universities in countries such as Jordan, Ukraine, Russia, and other Eastern European countries (Haidar and Bar-Haim, 2022). Arab students were exceptionally equipped to exploit these opportunities due to their proficiency in Arabic and the ties between the Arab population and the Eastern bloc before the fall of the former USSR.

However, despite these increased opportunities, early studies of the 1990s educational expansion in Israel did not find a meaningful decrease in the gap between Jews and Palestinian Arabs in participation in academic education. Studies of the first decade of the educational expansion consistently found that Palestinian Arabs still lag behind Jews in their participation. For example, Feniger et al. (2015) found that while disadvantaged Jewish ethnic groups improved their enrollment in higher education compared to affluent ethnic groups, Palestinian Arabs remained disadvantaged. Similarly, Bar-Haim and Blank (2019) found that in 2016, only 16% of Palestinian Arabs in the age group of 19–35 were admitted to higher education institutions, while the percentage of Jews more than doubled in admission rates. However, studies of more recent trends show that in recent years, Arabs have increased their participation dramatically (Fuchs, 2017; Haidar and Bar-Haim, 2022) without any apparent structural change in the Israeli educational system.

This paper aims to understand the pattern of increased Palestinian Arab participation from the 1990s to the early 2020s. In the following chapters, I describe in detail the educational expansion that began in the 1990s and Israel's social and political changes that might have affected Palestinian Arabs' participation in higher education. Next, using a series of Age-Period-Cohort models, I present the changes in participation in higher education for Jews and Palestinian Arabs of different religious groups.

Educational Expansion—Changes in the Israeli Higher Education System from the 1990s

Prior to the 1990s reforms, Israel's higher education system was comprised of seven universities along with several second-tier colleges and teacher seminars. To gain admission into these universities, students had to pass the matriculation exam and a psychometric test. However, the limited number of institutions and high matriculation exam requirements led to low eligibility rates, with less than 25% of the students qualifying for admission (Ayalon and Shavit, 2004).

Partly due to the massive immigration from the former Soviet Union, during the 1990s, there was a rise in demand for higher education in Israel. As a result, two major types of changes happened in the Israeli education system during the 1990s and afterward: (a) changes in the admission requirements due to reforms in the matriculation diploma and psychometric tests; and (b) expansion of the pathways to achieve an academic diploma by increasing the number of academic institutions. Both types are interconnected since the increase in matriculation diploma holders increased the demand for higher education diplomas, which met with an increase in available options to obtain them (Bar-Haim and Feniger, 2021).

Changes in the Matriculation Diploma

Starting during the late 1980s and the 1990s, Israel’s Ministry of Education implemented changes to the education system to increase access to higher education (Bar-Haim and Feniger, 2021). These changes included the expansion of matriculation exams to vocational subjects, allowing students to obtain vocational accreditation without compromising eligibility for a matriculation diploma. Additionally, the matriculation exams themselves were modified in the late 1990s to reduce the workload for students and allow for repeated testing (Ayalon and Shavit, 2004); at first, these changes met with an increase in the requirements by the universities. However, later changes, starting at the end of the 1990s were more subtle. They included the option to take the matriculation exams more than once during high school (Allalouf et al., 2020) and introduced a more convenient structure of the prestigious matriculation exam in math and English (Gorodzeisky et al., 2023). These changes did not meet with additional requirements from universities. These changes led to an increase in the percentage of high school graduates obtaining a matriculation diploma, which allows students to enter both colleges and universities.

Expansion of the Pathways to Achieve an Academic Diploma

In the 1990s, the Israeli higher education system underwent significant changes, including the establishment and expansion of alternatives to the traditional system of research universities. This included the creation of public regional colleges, private colleges, and academically accredited teacher training colleges (Shavit et al. 2003). As a result, there was a significant increase in higher education enrollment, especially at the baccalaureate level. The number of students studying for a first degree at higher education institutions more than doubled during the first two decades after the reform from more than 70,000 students in the early 1990s to more than 170,000 in the early 2000s (Blank et al. 2016).

One of the main drivers of this expansion was the anticipated demand for higher education due to massive immigration from the former Soviet Union after its collapse. These immigrants, many of them holding an academic degree from the USSR, wanted a similar education for their sons and daughters. In addition, there was a significant increase in the number of matriculates due to the above-mentioned reform, and the skill-biased technological change (SBTC) resulted in a rising demand for university graduates in the labor market. Additionally, the transformation of semi-professional training programs, such as teachers' seminars and nursing schools, into academic programs that award BA or equivalent degrees also contributed to the expansion of higher education.

Among other pathways to achieving an academic degree were several international options. These took two forms; the first was the foreign university extensions that provided an international degree from several universities in Europe and the USA. The second option was the expansion of studying abroad in universities in countries like Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Russia, and Ukraine, which became available to Israeli undergraduate students in addition to the already available opportunities in the USA and Western Europe.

Studies of the expansion of academic education in Israel found that in terms of inequality of opportunities, it followed at the start the maximally maintained inequality (MMI) hypothesis (Raftery and Hout 1993): students from affluent backgrounds enjoyed the new educational opportunities at higher rates than students from disadvantaged backgrounds (Ayalon and Yogev, 2005, 2006). However, at later stages of the expansion, the pattern was less clear, and students from lower backgrounds entered academic education at an increasing pace, reducing educational inequalities in higher education (Bar-Haim et al., 2019). Thus, without actual evidence of saturation, i.e., the percentage of people coming from an affluent background who entered higher education did not stagnate nor decrease (Feniger et al., 2015; Bar-Haim et al., 2019).

Palestinian Arabs in Israel—De-segregation and Backlash

The 1990s marked a new era in Jewish-Arab relations in Israel. The second Rabin government, which took office in 1992 with the support of Arab political parties, and the peace process it persuaded, opened new opportunities for the political and social integration of Palestinian Arabs in Israeli society. However, by the end of the decade and the start of the new millennium, the political atmosphere shifted, and political assimilation was less of an option. In response, Arab leaders began to propose a new form of coexistence within the Israeli state. This idea manifested as "the Future Vision Manifesto" (The National Committee for the Heads of Arab Local Authorities in Israel, 2006), suggested de-segregation of Palestinian Arabs in the labor market, higher education, and public life while maintaining cultural and political autonomy. For example, it states the vision for economic de-segregation of Palestinian Arabs in Israel: "First, merging in the Israeli work market as a legitimate right of equal opportunities in employment and investment market being citizens of the state, second, creation of internal momentum within the economic movement that would lead toward an increase in the chances for the Arab society and relatively free from dependency and attain social unity and equality" (The National Committee for the Heads of the Arab Local Authorities in Israel, 2006, p. 20). I suggest that this pattern is neither a full autonomy nor full integration and should be regarded as de-segregation: opposing the former segregation of Palestinian Arabs while also rejecting assimilation in the Jewish society in Israel.

Although this manifesto received a negative response in the Jewish political and public sphere, much of the changes in Arab society in Israel can be perceived despite this manifesto. After the October 2000 events,Footnote 2 Palestinian Arabs, who saw their political power weaken, increased their participation in the Jewish labor market (Darr, 2018; Fuchs, 2017) and in the Israeli education system (at all levels). New cultural centers opened in many Arab and mixed cities and towns, and grassroots organizations promoting social goals began to emerge. This process led to increased Arab participation in the Israeli public sphere, ultimately resulting in increased political power, as seen in the 2020 elections, where an Arab party was part of the coalition for the first time since 1992.

Minorities and Educational Expansion

Following Ogbu's typology of minorities (1992), Palestinians Arabs in Israel can be considered involuntary minorities. Pásztor (2006) suggested that the effect of educational expansion on the educational achievement of involuntary minorities is a result of an interaction between the minority and majority goals in terms of assimilation vs. maintenance of boundaries between the majority and minority. According to Pasztor, in cases where the involuntary minority wants to assimilate and meet the same expectation from the majority group, the sons and daughters of the minority group would benefit from the educational expansion (as it happened, for example for the Hungarian minority in Ukraine). However, in cases where the minority or the majority groups are against assimilation, as was the case for the Hungarian minority in Serbia, the educational expansion would not benefit the minority group. Similar results were found for Roma people in the Czech Republic (Fónadová et al., 2019). However, for African Americans in the USA, there is strong evidence that educational expansion increased participation in higher education and decreased racial inequalities (Klein, 2016).

Educational Expansion and Palestinian Arabs in Israel

Following Ogbu’s terminology, there is no doubt that Palestinian Arabs in Israel are an involuntary minority. However, the question regarding the dynamics between assimilation and maintenance is more complex. As Abu-Saad (2004, 2019) finds, the Israeli educational system was dedicated to the maintenance of the separation between Arabs and Jews in Israel, a separation that led to subordination of the former. However, in the last two decades, the centralization of the Israeli educational system was challenged, allowing for more assimilation. Firstly, the public educational system went through a massive neo-liberal change that allowed (at least partially) state-funded autonomous schools (Magadley et al., 2019). Such schools emerged in Palestine Arab communities in Israel, especially in the mixed cities, and allowed students to achieve a prestigious matriculation diploma while maintaining their Palestinian identity (Magadley et al., 2019). Secondly, the option to obtain an academic degree outside Israel has been expanded. Palestinian Arabs from Israel were able to study in Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Turkey, and other Middle Eastern countries (Haj-Yehia and Arrar, 2020). The option to study in Eastern Europe and Germany, which was scarcely available before the 2000s, was also expanded and exploited by Palestinian Arabs in Israel, as well as by Israeli Jews (Haj-Yehia and Arrar, 2022). These changes decreased the ability of the educational system to maintain educational subordination that was maintained before the 2000s (Al-Haj, 2012)

Palestinian Arab Women in Israel

Despite the progress made by Palestinian Arab women in Israel in terms of education, employment, and political representation, they still face significant challenges in finding their place within the Arab-Palestinian community, particularly in rural areas where the traditional extended family structure prevails. Studies have highlighted this struggle as these women strive to reconcile their traditional roles within the community with their desire for greater autonomy and equality (Meler, 2022). Even though they started from a disadvantaged position, Arab women have been instrumental in driving changes in Palestinian society. Part of it might result from a more positive reaction of the Jewish population and institutions toward Arab women in juxtaposition to the attitudes toward men. However, as suggested by Zinngrebe (2019), this also threatens their identity as Palestinians and may lead to conflicts of conservative elements within their community (Abu-Rabia-Queder and Weiner-Levy, 2008; Abu-Rabia-Queder, 2012; Mandel and Birgier, 2016).

Palestinian Arabs Women at the Face of Educational Expansion

Bar-Haim et al. (2019) studied the effect of educational expansion on low SES Jewish women in Israel and suggested that the improvement in educational position among these women can be attributed to the Maximally Maintained Inequality (MMI) hypothesis and the gendered nature of educational attainment processes. They claim that saturation at a certain level of education among privileged women, combined with stagnated demand among men, can open new opportunities for underprivileged women to enter higher education.

The importance to this case is not the saturation per se, but the stagnation of the demand for education. This stagnation together with a continuing expansion of higher education created a gap between the supply and the demand and enabled women, even from groups that were traditionally excluded from higher education (such as women from the lower class) to enter higher education.

This stagnation might be a result of the devaluation of education among Jewish men who believe that there are more prosperous career paths (mainly using the military service in a cyber-related occupation) than academic education.

Following that logic, I suggest a similar hypothesis for changes in the education of Arab women in Israel. In other words, the stagnation of education among Jewish women in the following decade might leave open opportunities for Arab women to integrate into the higher education system. While they faced less discrimination than Arab men, higher education among Jews would not be as desired as it had been before the educational expansion (due to devaluation). In a context where such stagnation would have occurred, they could increase their share in higher education. Hence, we would expect that the rise of Arab women in higher education would parallel an equivalent of a Jewish "male flight" from it (Wright and Jacobs, 1994). The term describes the reluctance of members of the majority group to participate in the same occupational or educational domain in which the minority group also participates in growing numbers. Such a flight should be noticed among Jewish men and women who were born in the same cohort as Arab women who increased their share in higher education. Hypotheses

H1: Following the changes in the Palestinian Arab society in Israel, the participation of Palestinian Arabs in academic education is expected to increase, but with the already increased participation of Jews following the educational expansion of the 1990s, the ethnoreligious gaps between Jews and Palestinian Arabs are expected to remain like the levels before the expansion.

H2: Due to the stagnation of in participation of Jewish students, and the lower barriers for Palestinian Arab women in Israel, they would increase their participation in higher education at higher rates than Palestinian Arab men and decrease the gap between them and their Jewish counterparts.

Model

To study the educational attainment of different ethnic groups over time in the absence of panel data, one can opt to use Age-Period-Cohort (APC) models. Such models represent a shift from the individual level to the cohort level and, at least in sociology, fit with Manheim's (1970[1928]) notion of a sociological generation as an important unit of analysis.

Most APC models aim to infer their results from a Lexis table. This table type aggregates data according to age groups and years (periods). Cohort trends can be observed by following the diagonals, which contain the intersection between age and period that is unique to each cohort. However, to estimate the trend of changes between cohorts net of age and period effects, one must use a statistical model that makes implicit or explicit assumptions regarding these effects.

Hence, the method used in this study to examine educational attainment is the Age-Period-Cohort-Trended Lag (APCTLAG) model (Chauvel et al., 2017). This model builds on Chauvel's (2012) Age-Period-Cohort-Detrended (APCD) model, which detects deviations from linear trends of the age, period, and cohort but cannot identify the actual linear trends. In the APCTLAG model, the linear age trend is constrained to the average within-cohort age effect across the cohorts in the observation window. The period linear trend is imposed with a slope of zero. This allows the cohort vector to absorb the general linear trend of social change. Practically, the estimation is done using a GLM model with imposed constraints. Equation 1 describes the model as well as its constraints.

$$\left\{\begin{array}{c}{z}^{apc}={\alpha }_{a}+\pi_{p}+{\gamma }_{c}+{\alpha }_{0}{{rescale}}\left(a\right)+{\varepsilon }_{i}\\ \left\{\begin{array}{c}\sum {\alpha }_{a}=\sum {\pi }_{p}=0\\ {{Slope}}\left({\pi }_{p}\right)=0\\ {{Slope}}\left({\alpha }_{a}\right)= \frac{\sum ({y}_{{{a}}+1, {p}+1,{{c}}} - {y}_{{{a}},{{p}},{{c}}})}{\left({{p}}-1\right)\left({{a}}-1\right)} \\ {{\min}}\left(c\right)<c<\max(c)\end{array}\right.\end{array}\right.$$
(1)

β0 denotes the constant, \({\alpha }_{a}\) is the age effect vector, \({\pi }_{p}\) is the period effect vector, and \({\gamma }_{c}\) is the cohort effect vector. The constraints mean that the sum of the age and period vectors is zero, and the period linear trend is zero. The linear trend in age is absorbed by rescale(a) which is a transformation of \({\alpha }_{a}\) from the initial values of an into a range between −1 and +1. The cohort coefficients include the constant and the linear trend on top of the nonlinear deviation patterns.

Data

To understand the trends in academic education among the Arab population in Israel over time and to compare them to the Jewish population, I use six cross-sectional labor force surveys conducted in the years 1995, 2000, 2005, 2009, 2015, and 2021.Footnote 3 Each dataset includes a sample of between approximately 90,000 to 218,000 respondents, of which 18.38% are Palestinian Arabs.

By stacking five cross-sectional datasets together, it is possible to create a Lexis table that allows me to analyze the educational attainment and workforce participation of different birth cohorts of Palestinian Arabs born between 1960 and 1995. The Lexis table provides a detailed view of the changes in education over time by following a specific cohort as it ages. This enables me to understand the long-term trends and patterns in educational attainment among the Arab population in Israel. Table 2 in the Appendix presents the number of respondents in each cell at the Lexis table.

Variables

As mentioned earlier, APCTlag models contain age and period variables which form the Lexis table. In this paper, the age variable is in the range of between 20 and 40 (included) with 5-year intervals. The period variable ranged between 1995 and 2020, with 5-year intervals.

The dependent variable is academic education. It was constructed from several education variables that were obtained by the Israeli CBS for each wave. It is a dummy variable indicating whether the respondent received academic education (1) or not (0).

Ethno-Religion Identity

Following the literature on the stratification between Palestinian Arabs and Jews as well as within the Arab community in Israel, the categories of the primary independent variable are based on the five largest religious groups in Israel—Jews,Footnote 4 Muslims, Christians, and Druze. Non-Arab Christians and Muslims were omitted from the analyses. However, since the last two groups are small relative to the first two, another variable, namely national identity, was constructed. This is a dummy variable that aggregates all the Arab respondents (Muslims, Christians, and Druze) into one group.

Table 1 presents the Lexis tables for academic education separately for Jews and Palestinian Arabs. The rows in the Lexis tables represent periods (in 5-year intervals) while the columns represent age groups (again, in 5-year intervals). The diagonals in the tables represent the period-age cohorts in the analysis. For example, the yellow diagonal represents the cohort born during the late 1970s (1995–2020 = 2000–2025 = 2005–2030… = 1975).

Table 1 Lexis tables for Jews and Palestinian Arabs (number of cases)
Full size table

Results

Figure 1a presents the cohort coefficients of four APCTlag models predicting academic education among men. Each model was estimated for a specific ethnoreligious group: Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Druze. For Jews, there is a clear pattern of educational expansion, starting from the very early cohort (who were born in the early 1960s) up to the relatively young cohort who were born in the second half of the 1980s. The younger Jewish cohorts show a decline in educational attainment. However, for the last cohort, born after 1995, this result is not surprising since, at the time of the last survey (2021), many of them have not finished their educational career.

Fig. 1
figure 1

a APCTlag coefficients for academic education by ethnoreligious group: men. b APCTlag coefficients for academic education by ethnoreligious group: women

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Christians follow a similar pattern to Jews, with two notable exceptions; starting from the first cohort who enjoyed the educational expansion (1975), the educational attainment of Christians is significantly lower than that of Jews. In addition, the trend of increasing educational attainment does not reverse for the cohort born in the early 1990s and starts to decrease only for the youngest cohort (again, because many in this cohort did not complete their academic degrees).

For Muslim men, the pattern of educational attainment is quite different from that of Jews and Christians. For cohorts born before 1980, the increase in educational attainment is moderate, even for the cohorts who finished high school during the massive educational expansion (1975–1980). Only the cohorts who were born afterward (1985–1990) enjoyed a steep increase in academic educational attainment. A similar pattern is found among Druze men, albeit it seems that at the start of the educational expansion, they also increased their share in academic education, but later cohorts followed the pre-expansion trend.

Turning to the trends among women, as can be seen in Fig. 1b, we can see a common trend that is less a result of educational expansion and more a result of changes in gender norms. Women of all groups substantially increased their participation in academic education since the beginning of the timeframe in question. Jewish women obtained higher education diplomas at an increasing rate until the cohort of the late 1980s when the rate had stagnated. Druze and Muslim women have increased their participation constantly from the late 1960s until the 1990s, and for the latest cohorts, there are no significant differences between Druze, Muslim, and Christian women. The latter are unique in their pattern; Christian women started very similarly to Jewish women. However, during the peak of the educational expansion, the gap between these groups increased, mainly due to the slow pace of increased participation among Christian women.

Comparing Fig. 1a and b, we can see that while the starting point for Muslim and Druze women was much more disadvantaged than their male counterparts, later cohorts almost diminished the gap between them and Christian women completely. Still, there is a gap between these three groups and Jewish women even in the latest cohorts. For men, on the other hand, the gap between non-Christian and Christian Arabs is significant for the latest cohorts while Christian men closed the gap between them and Jewish men.

Following the pattern differences found between Palestinian Arab men and women (Figure 1a and b), Figure 2 depicts the probability gap between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in each cohort for the entire sample, and for men and women separately. The pattern of the latter is in contrast to H1. Indeed, Jews who were born during the second half of the 1970s increased their participation and as a result, the educational gap from the cohort of 1960s to the 1980s increased. However, the cohorts born during the 1980s experienced stagnation in participation. Hence, the increase in Palestinian Arabs participating in higher education finally reached a point where there was a significant reduction in the gap between Jews and Palestinian Arabs in higher education.

Fig. 2
figure 2

APCTlag coefficient for the gap in academic education between Palestinian Arabs and Jews by gender

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The gap among women follows a similar pattern. However, there is no change in the trend for the cohorts of the 1970s. In line with H2, the gap reached its peak for the cohort born during the early 1980s, and the closing of the educational gap was more substantial than that of men.

Conclusion

Studies of educational attainment among Palestinian Arabs in Israel emphasized two parallel aspects; while some studies focused on the obstacles and discrimination that Palestinian Arabs face when entering higher education (Golan-Agnon, 2006), others emphasized the recent gains this group has achieved (Arar and Haj-Yehia, 2016). In this study, I was able to show how both aspects played a role in forming the current educational gap in Israel.

Using APCTlag models, I estimated the trend in academic education for each of the ethnoreligious groups in Israel separately for men and women. I also estimated trends in the gap between these groups. The results show a trend of increasing educational attainment among Jews and Christians in higher education with Jews having higher educational attainment than Christians. Muslim and Druze men also showed a moderate increase in academic education, with a steep increase in the 1985–1990 cohort. For women, all groups increased their participation in academic education, with Jewish women obtaining higher education diplomas at an increasing rate until the late 1980s when the rate stagnated. The gap between Jews and Palestinian Arabs in higher education showed a reduction with the closing of the gap being more substantial among women. The educational expansion had a significant impact on the closing of the gap between Jews and Palestinian Arabs in higher education. Moreover, among every ethnoreligious group, the gender gap in academic education reversed.

These findings indicate several essential characteristics of higher education in Israel and have implications for the research inequality of educational opportunities elsewhere. First, the differences between men in women, both in terms of trends and gaps, suggest that "the rise of women" was almost orthogonal to the educational expansion. While the structural change affected both men and women, the fact that Palestinian Arab women improved their position more than Arab men, suggests that the structural change can only partially explain the educational change. Thus, scholars who want to understand trends in women's participation in higher education, especially among minority groups, should focus more on cultural and social changes within these groups rather than structural changes in the educational system.

Secondly, the findings in this paper highlight the importance of studying within-group hierarchies. As presented in this paper, Christian Arabs follow a very different trend than any other ethnoreligious group in Israel. This trend suggests that Christian Arabs are starting to lose their higher position within the Palestinian Arab society in Israel. Unfortunately, due to data limitations, it was impossible to examine more distinct groups within this society, such as Bedouins.

This study is being written in a time of great uncertainty regarding the possibility of Palestinian Arabs maintaining their hard-earned gains in Israel. Especially in times like these, it is important to understand the nature of this limited window of opportunity in which the Palestinian Arabs were able to increase their share in academic education in Israel and how it became possible.