 Yarkoni was born Abd el-Majid Hidr () in the Bedouin village of Na'ura (east of Afula, in the Gilboa region of northern Israel).His family were Muslim Bedouin of the Mazarib tribe.In 1936, at the age of 16, he joined a band which sabotaged the Trans-Arabian Pipeline (Tapline), an oil pipeline running from the Iraqi oilfields to Haifa while Palestine was under British Administration (after Israeli independence, the Tapline was redirected to Sidon, Lebanon).