Who won the war - Hezbollah or Israel? Replacing the roar of the cannon and the rockets, the row rumbles on.

But with a twist.

No longer is victory trumpeted. Instead, there are competing claims that "we lost." Even Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah expresses enough misgivings about the war to suggest that he's worried that it will eventually be regarded as a defeat.

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The diplomatic aftermath of the war is still unfolding, but it's possible to declare three major winners: Lebanon, Israel and Palestine.

As Lebanon's national army gradually deploys across the country for the first time in 31 years, it's easy to see how this constitutes a major victory for all who seek a truly sovereign and stable Lebanon, untrammeled by both Syrian (external) or Hezbollah (internal) domination.

But Israel and Palestine - winners?

Still, all depends on proper implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, another milestone in the quest for full Lebanese sovereignty following the "Cedar Revolution" - the forced Syrian pull-out - and adoption of Resolution 1559 en route to the disarming of Hezbollah's state-within-a-state status.

Set aside 1701 and 1559 and go back to a far earlier UN resolution that established the parameters for a peaceful, secure Middle East - Resolution 242, which was adopted in November 1967 following the seminal Six-Day War.

At the heart of 242 is the formula of "secure and recognized boundaries."

Since then, Israel has studiedly focused on the first element of those sought-for borders - "secure" - and shunted aside the second element - "recognized." This total reliance on security resulted in decades of occupation; and when, because of the resulting security cost, occupation became unsustainable, the quest for security, somewhat perversely, became a key reason for Israel's unilateralist withdrawal policy, both from Lebanon in 2000 and from Gaza a year ago.

Both occupation and the subsequent withdrawals were rooted in unilateralism - Israel did not seek recognition of its borders, only that those borders would ensure security.

Indeed, two months ago Israel was arrayed on two international borders, by and large recognized borders, but there was no security. Indeed, the two parallel wars (in Gaza and Lebanon) were ignited for the same reason - the violation of those borders.

Partly due to mixed results on the battlefield, a dramatic shift in Israeli thinking is crystallizing. Israelis are waking up to the fact that their only way to secure "secure" borders is to have those borders not only "recognized" as "legitimate," but also guaranteed.

For the first time since 1967, the mind-set of Israeli policy-makers is turning inside out. First, occupation as a guarantee for security has been shelved; second, Israel no longer is sure that when it withdraws to an internationally accepted border it will enjoy security; third, a "legitimate" border can only be "secure" if it is backed by international guarantees.

After Lebanon, there's talk of an international presence at border crossings between Israel and Gaza, of the need to create an international force within Gaza to guarantee that that border is secured just like the 1701 international force in Lebanon is intended to guarantee the Israel-Lebanon border.

That's precisely why the Palestinians can be deemed to have come out ahead as a result of this war. Not because they need to determine - as it's now argued - whether they can imitate Hezbollah and challenge Israel militarily, but because Israel's newly-discovered reliance on international guarantees will guarantee them their state.

This changing perception of Israel's boundaries still relates only to Lebanon and to Gaza. And what of the West Bank?

But a guarantee that Israel's border with Gaza will be secure following the Israeli pullback to the international border is the guarantee-in-waiting for the Palestinians that recognition of an Israeli-Palestinian border need not stop at Gaza, and can be equally applicable between Israel and the West Bank.

Ehud Olmert was elected on the promise of "doing a Gaza on the West Bank," that is, to fix unilaterally Israel's own border by withdrawing from 90 percent of the West Bank. The Palestinians and the world decry unilateralism. There is now a credible alternative - a guarantee by the international community of the security of a recognized border to which Israel would withdraw. The world's lesson, the Palestinian gain, from this shift in Israel's post-war attitude is that the guarantee for "secure and recognized boundaries" suddenly becomes more important than something for which the Palestinians have always argued (and which the world has often followed) - the "legitimacy" of such borders.

There is one more common denominator between the three winners - each has suffered from lack of sovereignty: Lebanon as the fighting ground of warring parties, Palestine because of Israeli occupation and lack of its own authoritative central government, and Israel because land conquests and the consequent non-acceptance of its boundaries has always left it unsure whether it enjoys full acceptance as a sovereign state.

What constitutes the basis for sovereignty in the Middle East conflict - secure, recognized or legitimate borders? A tidal shift in regional peacemaking could succeed this latest Israel-Arab war. Will all three states rise to the challenge? Will the world adapt its peacemaking endeavors - hitherto enshrined in the land-for-peace doctrine - and recognize the new direction?