For Zionists, their enterprise was now backed by an indispensable "iron wall" of British military might, in the words of Ze'ev Jabotinksy. For the inhabitants of Palestine, whose future it ultimately decided, Balfour's careful, calibrated prose was in effect a gun pointed directly at their heads, a declaration of war by the British Empire on the indigenous population. The majority now faced the prospect of being outnumbered by unlimited Jewish immigration to a country then almost completely Arab in its population and culture. Whether intended this way or not, the declaration launched a full-blown colonial conflict, a century-long assault on the Palestinian people, aimed at fostering an exclusivist "national home" at their expense.