By Yimou Lee and Ben Blanchard
TAIPEI (Reuters) -&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;has set&nbsp;up&nbsp;a&nbsp;task&nbsp;force&nbsp;to draw lessons from the surprise attack by&nbsp;Hamas&nbsp;on&nbsp;Israel, Defence Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said on Thursday, saying intelligence is key to preventing a&nbsp;war&nbsp;as the island works to counter China's military threats.
Taiwan, claimed by China as its own territory, has come under increasing military and political pressure from Beijing, including two major&nbsp;sets&nbsp;of Chinese&nbsp;war&nbsp;games near the island since August 2022, heightening fears of a conflict that would have global ramifications.
Although there are major differences between the threat&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;faces from China and what is happening between&nbsp;Israel&nbsp;and&nbsp;Hamas&nbsp;- China for example would have to cross the&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;Strait to invade the island - the&nbsp;war&nbsp;has focused attention on the possibility of a Chinese attack.
Chiu, asked by reporters at parliament about what lessons&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;has learned from&nbsp;Israel's conflict with Palestinian&nbsp;Hamas&nbsp;militants, said the ministry had set&nbsp;up&nbsp;a&nbsp;task&nbsp;force&nbsp;to monitor the situation.
"The initial (lesson) is that intelligence work is very important. With intelligence, many countermeasures can be made. A&nbsp;war&nbsp;can even be avoided," Chiu said.
He said the fighting between&nbsp;Israel&nbsp;and&nbsp;Hamas&nbsp;demonstrated the horror of&nbsp;war, and although the military was working to boost combat readiness, it will not conflict.
"It is everyone's shared expectations to avoid a&nbsp;war," he said.
Taiwan's government has condemned the&nbsp;Hamas&nbsp;attack, with President Tsai Ing-wen saying&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;remains "committed to working with like-minded countries to fight threats and violence and to safeguard freedom and democracy".
Taiwan&nbsp;holds presidential and parliamentary elections in January, which the main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), has cast as a choice between&nbsp;war&nbsp;and peace. The KMT has accused the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of taking&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;to the brink of&nbsp;war&nbsp;by intentionally provoking China, which it strongly denies.
On Sunday, KMT chairman Eric Chu said what happened in&nbsp;Israel&nbsp;has "made everyone feel what it means to be threatened by&nbsp;war".
"We believe that peace across the&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;Strait is what everyone expects. No&nbsp;Taiwanese wants to see&nbsp;war," said Chu, whose party traditionally favours close ties with Beijing.
Senior DPP lawmaker Wang Ting-yu, responding on his Facebook page, criticised the KMT for not condemning China and its threats against&nbsp;Taiwan.
"These people are not pacifists; they have intentionally or otherwise become pawns of the aggressor," Wang wrote.
Tsai has overseen a military modernisation program to bolster&nbsp;Taiwan's defences.
Former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison told a forum in Taipei on Wednesday that with China's threats against the island, it was important to strengthen&nbsp;Taiwan's resilience but that&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;needed to do more itself.
"Such urgency must also be demonstrated by&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;itself.&nbsp;Israel&nbsp;is an even smaller nation than&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;and likewise lives under constant threat," he told an audience that included&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;Foreign Minister Joseph Wu. "But they spend considerably more proportionally on its defence than here in&nbsp;Taiwan."
The overall defence budget proposed by the government for next year amounts to 2.5% of&nbsp;Taiwan's GDP.&nbsp;Israel's amounts to 4.5% for this year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
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(Reporting By Yimou Lee and Ben Blanchard; Editing by Gerry Doyle)

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