Actually, I'm not sure why anyone would link the fig tree with Israel. The Bible doesn't seem make the fig tree a metaphor for Israel very often.

Actually, the Romans held the fig tree to be sacred because it was under the fig tree that Remus and Romulus were suckled. Jesus' cursing of the fig tree elsewhere is certainly a veiled attack on Rome.
If God wanted us to be Atheists we'd be born that way.