TAIPEI — As Taiwan’s election approaches next month, it is not only fraught ties with China competing for electors’ attention.

The candidates are exchanging blows over everything from property disputes to whether drinking whisky is out of touch, in a raucous and freewheeling display of the island’s democracy.

Taiwan’s Jan. 13 presidential and parliamentary election will define how the Chinese-claimed island deals with Beijing and the subject is indeed a major bone of contention.

But it is far from the sole issue debated at rallies, press conferences and on television talk shows where the uncensored exchanges are a major contrast to China, which says it is a socialist democracy but has been ruled only by the Communist Party since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949.

One subject taking much limelight in Taiwan is whether the childhood home of Lai Ching-te from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and currently frontrunner to be next president according to most polls, was illegally expanded by his family in an old coal mining area north of Taipei.

Mr. Lai has denied anything untoward took place. But he has pledged to donate the tidy-looking house, which using Chinese-language wordplay on his name the opposition have called Mr. Lai’s “rascally shack,” so it can be turned into a miners’ museum. “I’ve seen that villagers in mining areas are worried the houses they’ve settled down in would be considered illegally built and be demolished. I’m very sorry about this. It is my responsibility to help everyone find a way to protect their housing rights,” Mr. Lai said last week.

The property ownership of the other two presidential candidates, Hou Yu-ih from the main opposition party the Kuomintang (KMT) and Ko Wen-je from the small Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), have also garnered attention.

The DPP has criticized Mr. Ko for co-owning farmland illegally turned into a parking lot, and Mr. Hou of profiting from renting out a large number of apartments his wife owns.

Mr. Ko has promised to tear up the parking lot. Mr. Hou has denied wrongdoing, and his wife said on Wednesday the apartments “from beginning to end do not belong” to him, denouncing “political smears and suspicion.”

Mr. Hou’s running mate, the outspoken media personality Jaw Shaw-kong, said this week nobody was being forced to live in the apartments, many of which were rented to students.

“If people think they are too expensive then boycott them,” Jaw Shaw-kong told reporters.

Illegally adding to buildings or putting farmland into other uses are not uncommon problems in Taiwan given the sometimes vague or unenforced regulations.

JOHNNIE WALKER
Mr. Lai has a lead of around 5 percentage points in most polls, though some have shown Mr. Hou only one or two points behind.

One focus for all three parties has been how to appeal to the young, with an estimated 1 million new voters eligible to cast ballots at this election.

Mr. Ko has honed in on bread-and-butter issues like the high cost of housing, and young people have flocked to his rallies even if he has trailed in the polls.

But the TPP has been attacked as out of touch with ordinary people for Mr. Ko’s choice of running mate, Cynthia Wu, whose family is a major shareholder of conglomerate the Shin Kong Group.

The TPP’s opponents mocked Mr. Wu for comments at a vice presidential debate on Friday where she said “when I was young, everyone loved to drink Johnnie Walker,” referring to the popular Scotch whisky.

Wang Ting-yu, a senior DPP lawmaker, shot back on his Facebook page that when he was young, “we mostly drank plain water.”

Ms. Wu downplayed the furor.

“Sarsaparilla, beer, guava juice and Johnnie Walker is for us Chinese what should be on the table to drink. OK? So there’s no need to make a fuss about it,” she told reporters. — Reuters

CAIRO/GAZA/JERUSALEM — Israel’s war on Hamas will last months, Israel’s military chief said, as a string of incidents outside the Gaza Strip highlighted the risk of the conflict spreading.

Israel’s Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi told reporters in a televised statement on Tuesday from the Gaza border that the war would go on “for many months.”

“There are no magic solutions, there are no shortcuts in dismantling a terrorist organization, only determined and persistent fighting,” Mr. Halevi said. “We will reach Hamas’ leadership too, whether it takes a week or if it takes months.”

Israeli actions intensified around Christmas, particularly in a central area just south of the seasonal waterway that bisects the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army told civilians to leave the area, though many said there was no safe place left to go. 

“We are gravely concerned about the continued bombardment of Middle Gaza by Israeli forces, which has claimed more than 100 Palestinian lives since Christmas Eve,” said United Nations Human Rights Office spokesperson Seif Magango on Tuesday.

“Israeli forces must take all measures available to protect civilians. Warnings and evacuation orders do not absolve them of the full range of their international humanitarian law obligations.”

Israel is determined to destroy Hamas despite global calls for a ceasefire in the 11-week-old war.

Since Hamas killed 1,200 people and captured 240 hostages on Oct. 7 in the deadliest day in Israeli history, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has responded with an assault that has laid much of Hamas-ruled Gaza to waste.

Palestinian health authorities say nearly 21,000 people have been killed in Israeli strikes, with thousands more feared buried under rubble. Nearly all the enclave’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes, many several times.

Gaza authorities buried 80 unidentified Palestinians on Tuesday whose bodies were handed over by Israel through the Kerem Shalom border crossing, the health ministry said.

According to the Islamic Waqf, or religious affairs ministry, the bodies were collected from the northern part of the Gaza Strip. They were buried in a long ditch at a Rafah cemetery in the south.

“Pictures are being taken to identify them later,” a representative of the Gaza Islamic Waqf said during the burials.

Israel says it is doing what it can to protect civilians, and blames Hamas for putting them in harm’s way by operating among them, which Hamas denies. But even Israel’s closest ally the United States has said it should do more to reduce civilian deaths from what President Joseph R. Biden has called “indiscriminate bombing.”

SPREAD THREAT
There are growing signs the conflict is starting to spread.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia claimed responsibility for a missile attack on Tuesday on a container ship in the Red Sea and for an attempt to attack Israel with drones.

The Houthis have been attacking ships they say have links to Israel in the entrance to the Red Sea, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. The attacks are a response to Israel’s assault on Gaza, the militia says.

An Israeli airstrike killed a senior leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in Syria on Monday.

And on the Lebanon border on Tuesday, Israel said Hezbollah fired anti-tank missiles at a church, wounding nine Israeli soldiers and a civilian, after which it fired rockets from near a mosque, drawing retaliatory airstrikes.

In India, meanwhile, there was an explosion near the Israeli embassy in New Delhi. Authorities said no staff were hurt.

“We are in a multi-front war and are coming under attack from seven theatres: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), Iraq, Yemen and Iran,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told lawmakers on Tuesday, listing six places where Iran-backed militants are active, as well as Iran itself.

“We have already responded and taken action in six of these theatres,” he said, without specifying the one that had yet to see Israeli action.

Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer was meeting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan in Washington on Tuesday for talks on the war and the return of hostages, the White House said.

The United States has openly pressed Israel in recent weeks to scale down its war to a more targeted operation of raids on Hamas leaders. But Washington is still seen in the region as a supporter of Israel and US forces have been attacked by Iran-backed militants in the Middle East.

The US military carried out retaliatory airstrikes on Kataib Hezbollah militants in Iraq on Monday after a drone attack on a US base in Erbil left one US service member in critical condition and wounded two. — Reuters