The language of the nine-page report, along with Washington’s blessings, could signal President Obama’s efforts to make a final push on what was once a centerpiece of his foreign policy: an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. That goal has become a major diplomatic frustration, and there is little expectation that the White House will take any significant steps before the election. Coming so late in the president’s second term, the report could instead offer a path to his successor.

“This is designed to signal, but with very low expectations that its going change behavior by the Israelis or the Palestinians,” said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Middle East program of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington and a former adviser to both Republican and Democratic administrations. “What I think it could be a prelude to is an American effort after November.”

It remains to be seen if the Quartet’s report will prompt a Security Council resolution, an idea that the United States has long opposed but that has the support of its European partners. It directs its recommendations only to the Israelis and Palestinians, calling on them to “independently demonstrate, through policies and actions, a genuine commitment to the two-state solution.”

The United Nations envoy who was involved in drafting the report, Nickolay Mladenov, said the goal was to show both sides that it is in their interest to return to negotiations.

“The main objective of the report is not to be a scorecard for assigning blame, but to provide a constructive way forward toward achieving a negotiated two-state solution,” he said on Friday. “Any other scenario entrenches a one-state reality of perpetual occupation and conflict that is incompatible with realizing the national aspirations of both peoples.”